The fun in healer DPS

These job changes will not and can not change your playstyle. The only thing that can change playstyle is the content coming up in 5.0.

The only meaningful thing Scholar lost is Energy Drain as an Aetherflow dump and the occasinal decision of saving an Aetherflow for healing abilities.
What will be the next Aetherflow dump? We'll see (I think at the very least some Lustrates will be needed due to Embrace/Aetherpact nerfs).

What makes healer DPS engaging is the act of balancing your Healing and DPS abilities, not the number of different buttons you press.

Scholar single target:
1) Before: 21111111112111111111, occasinally replace a 1 (Broil) with a 3 (Miasma).
2) After: 21111111112111111111
And Ruin II as a weaving tool.

Scholar AoE:
1) Before: Miasma, Bio II, Bane, Miasma II spam
2) After: Art of War spam

If you think that "1" is engaging, but "2" is a snoozefest, I don't know what to tell you.

I personally can't make an opinion until I try the new content in 5.0, but you can try the new SCH today. You can do an expert dungeon and see if you like how it feels by removing the skills that are going away in ShB. It should be relatively close to how that dungeon will feel in the expansion. If you find that the experience is largely the same you should be ok. If not you will have to rely on content and tank changes to make up for anything lost in the experience.

I may not be in the majority with my opinion on SCH, but having just recently picked it up after AST and WHM, I feel like it’s AoE rotation is too many things to manage, for the same result that WHM and AST can do in half the time and half the buttons.

My main AST, is just Gravity spam, which I’m perfectly fine with.
WHM is just Aero III and Holy spam, soon to be just Holy spam because of Aero III going.
SCH, requires two dots and Bane just to set up the DoTs… and as damage over time, those 2.5 GCD’s eat into your damage, and with AoEs being used for trash pulls, that’s pretty much half the HP of the enemies anyway, they’re dead before your DoT collection has had a chance to do anything. And your AoE spam ability, is another DoT! So spamming it is actually a DPS loss.
And if like me you DPS via target-of-target macros, because you’re a controller player, then if the tank switches target, your DoTs end up on different targets, and you can’t Bane.

So yeah, I’m not at all bothered by this, will probably make me more likely to play SCH.

Is this a troll? No effort was put into making those pre shb rotations even remotely accurate. What happened to shadowflare? ED? What happened to miasma 2? What about quickened aetherflow and the AF skill being used more often? What happened to dissipation as an optimisation tool for dps?
Why no mention of weaving?

Also ruin II is only good for double weaving so why no mention of the clipping? Fun gameplay is about having options for both healing uptime and downtime. Fun is about having the opportunity to take risks in order to gain more rewards. Fun is about feeling like your class flows, not like it’s a clunky clipping machine with constant instant gcd casts that you have nothing to weave into. Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon. Even if the current 7 skills we use are still not enough in your mind there’s no denying it’s better than 1.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I may not be in the majority with my opinion on SCH, but having just recently picked it up after AST and WHM, I feel like it’s AoE rotation is too many things to manage, for the same result that WHM and AST can do in half the time and half the buttons.

My main AST, is just Gravity spam, which I’m perfectly fine with.
WHM is just Aero III and Holy spam, soon to be just Holy spam because of Aero III going.
SCH, requires two dots and Bane just to set up the DoTs… and as damage over time, those 2.5 GCD’s eat into your damage, and with AoEs being used for trash pulls, that’s pretty much half the HP of the enemies anyway, they’re dead before your DoT collection has had a chance to do anything. And your AoE spam ability, is another DoT! So spamming it is actually a DPS loss.
And if like me you DPS via target-of-target macros, because you’re a controller player, then if the tank switches target, your DoTs end up on different targets, and you can’t Bane.

So yeah, I’m not at all bothered by this, will probably make me more likely to play SCH.

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You miasma and bio during the pull then weave shadowflare and bane in as the tank settles. Then spam miasma II and weave ED in for the mana. Also weave lucid and af for the mana. You’ll be doing as much of not more as you would on whm (depends on how strong the party dps is)
Yes it’s more involved but that’s what makes the design great. If it’s too much you have two other healer to fall back on. But if you get bored of your ast or whm you also have a bit of a harder class to play in sch. Diversity is fun and gives you something more to work towards when you e already spent countless hours on the other healers.

My issue is less the changes themselves (I play WHM, the one least affected) and more the reason WHY that was given. I'm worried that they'll make further adjustments to remove DPS tools to try and "make me heal more" without knowing WHY I do so.

You're right that the number of buttons isn't necessarily what makes something fun, but maybe someone should tell SE that. Giving me healing tools won't make me heal more, I'll heal as the party requires it and beyond that there's no point.

I feel that we'll still continue to DPS with our limited kit and SE will look at that and think "...clearly we didn't do enough. Ok, now you have only one DPS spell but look, five more flavors of Cure II!"

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Originally Posted by EaMett

You miasma and bio during the pull then weave shadowflare and bane in as the tank settles. Then spam miasma II and weave ED in for the mana. Also weave lucid and af for the mana.

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During the pull? You mean while running? Bio...?
And again, the Tank changes target, and messes up my Bane.
Weave a ground targeting ability?

Are you telling me SCH is a M&K only job?

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Yes it’s more involved but that’s what makes the design great.

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This isn't a very convincing argument.
Complex doesn't mean it's good design.
SCH has always seemed like a mess to me.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Diversity is fun and gives you something more to work towards when you e already spent countless hours on the other healers.

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Precisely why I'd like to be able to play SCH instead of feeling locked out of it due to playing on controller and it's messy DoT management.

You already have the pet to manage, which is one distraction, a messy DoT system on top of that is too much. Seems to me SCH has as much of an identity issue as the other healers. AST can’t decide if its Regen or Shields, WHM doesn’t have anything unique, SCH is trying to do too many things at once.
Perhaps if SCH focused more on its pet instead of tripping over DoTs, it would work a lot better.
Unfortunately both systems are being simplified, so I don’t feel SE have quite got it right still.

Sure, that is why PLD make a big deal of being a 1-2-3 combo class in ARR, why DRK complain about "Dark Spam" and single combo, while part of the AST player base lament what they perceive as a dumbing down of the card system. Many of us don't find that very enganging. Hate to play AST before unlocking the card system, as the dps rotation is crap. Now SCH doesn't even have something like cards, and the fairy system seems more simple than ever.

Also, really? Another topic? Couldn't make your point in one of the other ten topics about Healers at the moment both in the healer section and General section.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

During the pull? You mean while running? Bio...?
And again, the Tank changes target, and messes up my Bane.
Weave a ground targeting ability?

Are you telling me SCH is a M&K only job?

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I weave ground target stuff just fine. Make a <t> macro for it or get better at using your camera to position it.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

I weave ground target stuff just fine. Make a <t> macro for it or get better at using your camera to position it.

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This will be a moot point in three weeks.

I play SCH on a controller and pretty much done everything. Controller is fine with SCH.

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Originally Posted by Seath

I play SCH on a controller and pretty much done everything. Controller is fine with SCH.

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How do you ground target for aoe's like Shadowflare etc? Genuine question...Having to heal on a controller terrifies and intrigues me in equal measure!

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Is this a troll? No effort was put into making those pre shb rotations even remotely accurate. What happened to shadowflare? ED? What happened to miasma 2? What about quickened aetherflow and the AF skill being used more often? What happened to dissipation as an optimisation tool for dps?
Why no mention of weaving?

Also ruin II is only good for double weaving so why no mention of the clipping? Fun gameplay is about having options for both healing uptime and downtime. Fun is about having the opportunity to take risks in order to gain more rewards. Fun is about feeling like your class flows, not like it’s a clunky clipping machine with constant instant gcd casts that you have nothing to weave into. Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon. Even if the current 7 skills we use are still not enough in your mind there’s no denying it’s better than 1.

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What about Miasma II? The only reason you would use it in single target is because it was better than Ruin II.
What about Shadowflare? Just an extra button you would press on cooldown with very few exceptions.

I've already said that ED is the only meaningful thing we lost.

We still have options for both healing uptime and downtime. You can still take risks.
"Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.

So I'll reiterate. The fun is in balancing your DPS with healing, not in having several buttons that simply replace Broil in your basic rotation.

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What about Shadowflare? Just an extra button you would press on cooldown with very few exceptions.

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But it was also a mitigating tool, actually more effective than Sacred Soil when dealing with big pulls, as it slowed down the enemy while doing quite a lot of DPS. And what does Miasma II is supossed to be used for AoE damage, it was a DoT which could have been used together with the new skill, considering that Yoshi said he wanted to make AoE more enganging by giving most classes atleast a AoE combo (guess Healer doesn't count).

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"Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.

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Good way of oversimplifying things. Guess we can tell that to tanks and DPS too, perhaps they will enjoy 2 button rotations too.

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Originally Posted by Ilyrian

How do you ground target for aoe's like Shadowflare etc? Genuine question...Having to heal on a controller terrifies and intrigues me in equal measure!

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Someone mentioned issues with target target. I generally would not use marcos since it can cause targeting issues. Although having one for excog and E2E can be a QOL thing. For ground targeting there is a setting for controller ground targeting which puts the reticle in the center of the screen and you would just line up the middle point on the screen during your weaver spell. Basically camera aiming vs mouse aiming. You pan the camera on targeting for aoe and pet placement.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Snip

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SCH works fine on controller. You have the option of making a shadowflare macro anyways. Besides it's hardly the only ground aoe skill to weave. All healers have one and plenty of other classes as well.
SCH doesn't have more dot management than WHM. Only two (miasma, bio II). Shadowflare is a cooldown like assize and miasma II dot management only happens when you're looking to weave and don't want to overwrite it. Which is already not that frequent but is also self maintaining since you can check if it's up when you need to weave as opposed to having to keep track of it. In dungeons you just spam it on trash and disregard the dot aspect.

You should be targeting the enemy you're attacking. As an FYI having <t> macros on all dps skills is a dps sink because your skills can't queue (I don't know if it's your case or not but just throwing it out there). You can sprint or swiftcast to dot during the pull.

It's actually a basic game design principle that gameplay options and diversity are generally good and balancing through homogenization is generally bad. In that sense the diversity that sch provided was good game design. Talking about the skill base or skill ceiling levels and moving those around.. Sure. Maybe lowering the skill base a little makes sense but that's hardly what happened here.

The fact that SCH and AST are the best flowing healer classes currently is also just a fact. We're never clipping our GCD, we have plenty of stuff to weave after instant GCD skills so we're never just sitting there and waiting for the GCD to come back. WHM in comparison is clunky. SCH is now roughly the same as WHM in 5.0.

Also pet management took a minimal amount of time. You just place it. If you optimize a lot you manual embrace and manually stop it's casting for timed embrace. The current iteration of the fairy is good because you can just ignore it if you're overwhelmed or you can finely tune it if you're more experienced. DPS was the same. You can just clip your skills, or miasma II spam if you don't get enough out of bane. But if you want to and have more experience you can go all out and weave everything like crazy.

It's ok for a class to have a different skill base and ceiling as long as you have other options in the same role.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

This will be a moot point in three weeks.

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I'll still have Asylum

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

What about Miasma II? The only reason you would use it in single target is because it was better than Ruin II.
What about Shadowflare? Just an extra button you would press on cooldown with very few exceptions.

I've already said that ED is the only meaningful thing we lost.

We still have options for both healing uptime and downtime. You can still take risks.
"Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.

So I'll reiterate. The fun is in balancing your DPS with healing, not in having several buttons that simply replace Broil in your basic rotation.

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Ok lets be honest here.
We went from a single target dummy 3mn rotation of:

Shadowflare x3, Bio x6, Miasma x8, Miasma II x9, ED x13, Broil III x 50 (miasma II and ED subject to change based on the amount of healing required)
That's 15 opportunities to weave and 16 skills to weave

To this in 5.0:
Bio x6 , Broil x 70
That's 6 opportunities to weave and no skills to weave. If you replace ED with all healing skills (which lets be honest, you wouldn't in current ultimate, so you most likely won't during shb). You'll be clipping because those 6 opportunities won't be enough and Ruin II is only good for double weaving.

I'll say it again, you're oversimplifying.

Dungeons went from:

(Miasma, Bio) during pull, Shadowflare, Bane, Miasma II, ED miasma II, ED, etc.

to:

Bio during pull, AoW, AoW, etc.

This doesn't touch on AF management. We'll probably spam lustrate a bit for gauge which is silly (but you did say ED was a bad loss so that's covered)

If you don't see any difference in the above then I'm really happy for you. You have a lot to look forward to in ShB. I say this without any sarcasm.
I just don't understand how you can objectively expect other people to be as happy as you though. Most of us just want enough back to no longer clip our gcd or wait for the Bio gcd to roll with nothing to weave.

The fact that you think that a rotation with 8, 7 of them used in single target situations, skills (Bio2, miasma, miasma 2, ruin2, broil2, energy drain, bane and shadowflare) is the same as a reductionist rotation of 4 offensive skills, 3 single target (ruin2, broil3, biolysis and art of war) says a lot about your quality as Sch.

Maybe some skills like shadowflare are just a press and forget until they come off cooldown but those are OPTIONS that we are losing, those are things to manage that we are losing and even if some are not as vital to the jobs as energy drain could be (which funny enough is going to dissapear too) losing them in a job which spends 80-90% of the time doing that thing is unacceptable.

You said: ""Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.". Fun is having options, having things to manage, having tools to expres yourself and your skill with the job you like, with the 5.0 changes we're losing fun.

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Originally Posted by Elgeron

But it was also a mitigating tool, actually more effective than Sacred Soil when dealing with big pulls, as it slowed down the enemy while doing quite a lot of DPS. And what does Miasma II is supossed to be used for AoE damage, it was a DoT which could have been used together with the new skill, considering that Yoshi said he wanted to make AoE more enganging by giving most classes atleast a AoE combo (guess Healer doesn't count).

Good way of oversimplifying things. Guess we can tell that to tanks and DPS too, perhaps they will enjoy 2 button rotations too.

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And how is "Miasma II + Art of War spam" more engaging than "Art of War spam"? You don't make things more engaging by adding buttons. Content itself must be engaging - dungeon content as currently designed will never be engaging, even if you give SCH a 50 different button rotation.

You're also missing my point, which is that the fun in dpsing as a healer is in balancing your healing/dps, not in having multiple buttons to press. I would say the same thing about dps and tanks, if the dps and tanks were healers...

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

The fact that you think that a rotation with 8, 7 of them used in single target situations, skills (Bio2, miasma, miasma 2, ruin2, broil2, energy drain, bane and shadowflare) is the same as a reductionist rotation of 4 offensive skills, 3 single target (ruin2, broil3, biolysis and art of war) says a lot about your quality as Sch.

Maybe some skills like shadowflare are just a press and forget until they come off cooldown but those are OPTIONS that we are losing, those are things to manage that we are losing and even if some are not as vital to the jobs as energy drain could be (which funny enough is going to dissapear too) losing them in a job which spends 80-90% of the time doing that thing is unacceptable.

You said: ""Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.". Fun is having options, having things to manage, having tools to expres yourself and your skill with the job you like, with the 5.0 changes we're losing fun.

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I did not say it's the same. I said that whatever you did with those 7 skills is no more engaging than what you'll be doing with the new kit. The only exception being Energy Drain, which I mentioned specifically.

The only "option" we had was Energy Drain. You do not have an "option between Broil2 and Miasma" when Miasma is up. You do not have an "option between Broil2 and Miasma" when Miasma is down. You simply replace a Broil2 button press with a Miasma button press in your 2111111111 rotation.

The rotation was not engaging before and it will be very trivially less engaging in 5.0. Playing a healer as a whole will not change, because what makes healer dps engaging is the process of balancing your "dps" casts and "heal" casts. Another thing that makes healer dps engaging is the content you do.

So, if you think Sch goes from engaging to boring due to these changes, all I have to say is find more engaging content.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

You're also missing my point, which is that the fun in dpsing as a healer is balancing your healing/dps, not having multiple buttons to press. I would say the same thing about dps and tanks, if the dps and tanks were healers...

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You're absolutely correct in saying that part of the fun is balancing healing and dps. Essentially what we're talking about here is optimizing healing to free up more downtime. Currently that downtime is spent DPSing. As such it wouldn't hurt to add a few more options in our DPS kit. Especially during dungeons. Both multitarget and single target would gain a lot of flow back from simply getting ED and shadowflare back in some form or another. Also fixing the potencies of Ruin II/Broil so that Ruin II becomes a good option for single weave.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

You're absolutely correct in saying that part of the fun is balancing healing and dps. Essentially what we're talking about here is optimizing healing to free up more downtime. Currently that downtime is spent DPSing. As such it wouldn't hurt to add a few more options in our DPS kit. Especially during dungeons. Both multitarget and single target would gain a lot of flow back from simply getting ED and shadowflare back in some form or another. Also fixing the potencies of Ruin II/Broil so that Ruin II becomes a good option for single weave.

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Yes, ED (or something that functions similarly - in the interest of separating SMN/SCH) is something I would want back.

Shadowflare as-is, I don't care. Now, if Shadowflare lasted, say, 60 seconds on lower potency, forcing a choice between keeping its DPS up or using the very overpowered new Soil, that's a different story.

Miasma, Miasma II, don't care. Bane - garbage.

Personal opinion here but isn’t it a bit presumptuous of us to assume that our own perceptions of what’s ‘fun’ are representative of the entire healer community. Unless any of us have surveyed every player that regularly uses a healer on their thoughts on the subject, none of us can describe an invariably ‘fun’ design. Honestly I think the real problem here is that everyone is trying to force their own definition of a ‘fun’ on each other, which naturally is just going to end in arguments.

Not that I’m saying nobody should give their personal opinions, but I don’t feel like trying to pass off our views as being those of the wider community is going to contribute anything to the discussion.


Ultimately, as with any video game, all we can really do is accept the definition of ‘fun’ supplied by the game developers themselves, regardless of where that definition falls.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Personal opinion here but isn’t it a bit presumptuous of us to assume that our own perceptions of what’s ‘fun’ are representative of the entire healer community. Unless any of us have surveyed every player that regularly uses a healer on their thoughts on the subject, none of us can describe an invariably ‘fun’ design. Honestly I think the real problem here is that everyone is trying to force their own definition of a ‘fun’ on each other, which naturally is just going to end in arguments.

Not that I’m saying nobody should give their personal opinions, but I don’t feel like trying to pass off our views as being those of the wider community is going to contribute anything to the discussion.


Ultimately, as with any video game, all we can really do is accept the definition of ‘fun’ supplied by the game developers themselves, regardless of where that definition falls.

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The regular feedback on the forums over the past 2-4 years should give a pretty decent overview of what the healer community considers as fun. There are also overarching game design principles that define "fun" to some measure. Challenge and expression being two of those principles. Both of which are nerfed by simplifying toolkits and homogenizing classes. It still remains to see whether the content will be more challenging but SE has a track record of keeping things easy for the lower tiered players. Which isn't a bad thing, it just isn't compatible with the changes made to some healers specifically.

Also, if the community spent the past 2 years complaining about how WHM needed a couple more DPS skills (instant gcd and ogcd) to make it feel less clunky during healing downtime. I think it's safe to say that removing those exact skills from SCH was going to create something not fun (for example, insert your favorite healer here).

I felt more engaged with the multiples dots to maintain in Heavensward and the stance dancing "stress" than the one and only on SHB.

Personnal feeling, personnal opinion, but that's my point of view.
The "real fun" about dpsing is already dead for a long time so, I got used to it.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

The regular feedback on the forums over the past 2-4 years should give a pretty decent overview of what the healer community considers as fun. There are also overarching game design principles that define "fun" to some measure. Challenge and expression being two of those principles. Both of which are nerfed by simplifying toolkits and homogenizing classes. It still remains to see whether the content will be more challenging but SE has a track record of keeping things easy for the lower tiered players. Which isn't a bad thing, it just isn't compatible with the changes made to some healers specifically.

Also, if the community spent the past 2 years complaining about how WHM needed a couple more DPS skills (instant gcd and ogcd) to make it feel less clunky during healing downtime. I think it's safe to say that removing those exact skills from SCH was going to create something not fun (for example, insert your favorite healer here).

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If that was true, a lot more people would currently play SCH. But WHM is still way, way ahead. And if we include AST's number to WHM since both are so close to each other in terms of their DPS kit, the "challenge, engagement and complexity" of SCH is definitly not what most people are actually looking for. If anything, looking at census numbers, SCH becoming more like WHM/AST will make it more popular.
It does not invalidate the complaints from people who enjoyed that aspect of SCH, but let's not make false generalities. When speaking about subjective topics, people should keep it on a personal level.

Also, the OF is well known for having a loud vocal minority and being an echo chamber. Saying that it's representative of the overall community is definitly not correct all the time. It just represents the people who do speak up. And even then, different social platforms often don't agree with each other on certain topics.

If anything, people should always remember Gordias.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

If that was true, a lot more people would currently play SCH. But WHM is still way, way ahead. And if we include AST's number to WHM since both are so close to each other in terms of their DPS kit, the "challenge, engagement and complexity" of SCH is definitly not what most people are actually looking for. If anything, looking at census numbers, SCH becoming more like WHM/AST will make it more popular.
It does not invalidate the complaints from people who enjoyed that aspect of SCH, but let's not make false generalities. When speaking about subjective topics, people should keep it on a personal level.

Also, the OF is well known for having a loud vocal minority and being an echo chamber. Saying that it's representative of the overall community is definitly not correct all the time. It just represents the people who do speak up. And even then, different social platforms often don't agree with each other on certain topics.

If anything, people should always remember Gordias.

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Quite a few issues with your post.

First off there are some other posts in this forum that go over the demographics that are most likely to have an online presence in these forums and therefore more likely to be represented. Aka people who would spend time online trying to better their skill in game (optimize). That would be the raiding scene for instance but not limited to since a lot of people who don’t raid still care about playing well.

Secondly SCH IS the most represented class in that demographic. By far. Besides I’m not even sure why you bring sch up here? This forum has been all about whm these past couple of years. Basically the healer that has it the roughest usually gets post monopoly and right now that is sch.

Thirdly, even if you consider census for the entire game whm represents about 36% of the active healer player base (to the best of our knowledge). Thats a tad over 1/3rd and not even close to being “way ahead” (whatever that means).

Lastly, you’re confusing what people are complaining about with the dps kit. We’re complaining about our options during downtime and how dumbed down and clunky they are.
In that regards comparing AST to WHM isn’t even close since AST has an entire card system to weave into their dps. Besides, even they have been here to complain about the changes and also don’t consider their “dps rotation” all that fun to start with so it’s easy to see what the state of whm and sch are in 5.0. (Although whm have been in this state and complaining a while now, they’re sad things haven’t changed and sch are dealing with the loss)

There’s also an argument to make about people who simply don’t care enough to give feedback and wether or not their lack of vocal opinion on the topic should even matter that much considering some of them may not even have an opinion. And does it even matter to any of them that the online presence is trying to readjust the kits a bit?

So all in all. No let’s not chuck it down to only being the opinion of those posting. Let’s treat the forums for what they are: a feedback channel that expresses the sentiment of its overarching demographic.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

I did not say it's the same. I said that whatever you did with those 7 skills is no more engaging than what you'll be doing with the new kit. The only exception being Energy Drain, which I mentioned specifically.

The only "option" we had was Energy Drain. You do not have an "option between Broil2 and Miasma" when Miasma is up. You do not have an "option between Broil2 and Miasma" when Miasma is down. You simply replace a Broil2 button press with a Miasma button press in your 2111111111 rotation.

The rotation was not engaging before and it will be very trivially less engaging in 5.0. Playing a healer as a whole will not change, because what makes healer dps engaging is the process of balancing your "dps" casts and "heal" casts. Another thing that makes healer dps engaging is the content you do.

So, if you think Sch goes from engaging to boring due to these changes, all I have to say is find more engaging content.

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Forgot about what you said about energy drain while writting, my bad sorry.

The rotation may not be as engaging as dps one but for a healer was good, not perfect and it had a lot of room to improve but was better than its counterparts in the job, 4 dots (1 of them cd) weaving options and a filler spell, may be basic but it worked good enough for me and other people to, with the help of the healing tools, keep the job interesting now you see what they're doing in the 5.0 and...that is not a scholar, thats a white mage with a fairy and we as customers have all the right to complain.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Quite a few issues with your post.

First off there are some other posts in this forum that go over the demographics that are most likely to have an online presence in these forums and therefore more likely to be represented. Aka people who would spend time online trying to better their skill in game (optimize). That would be the raiding scene for instance but not limited to since a lot of people who don’t raid still care about playing well.

Secondly SCH IS the most represented class in that demographic. By far.

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Right. And they do not represent all the people playing healers in the slightest. A huge portion of the FFXIV playerbase doesn't even come to the forums or speak on any social media. That demographic is represented almost nowhere but ingame. Which is why you absolutly cannot say that the forums are a good representation of the community as a whole. It never has, it never will be.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Besides I’m not even sure why you bring sch up here? This forum has been all about whm these past couple of years. Basically the healer that has it the roughest usually gets post monopoly and right now that is sch.

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Why do I talk about Scholar in a thread with people mostly discussing about how SCH is getting impacted by the changes? I don't understand your question...

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Thirdly, even if you consider census for the entire game whm represents about 36% of the active healer player base (to the best of our knowledge). Thats a tad over 1/3rd and not even close to being “way ahead” (whatever that means).

Lastly, you’re confusing what people are complaining about with the dps kit. We’re complaining about our options during downtime and how dumbed down and clunky they are.
In that regards comparing AST to WHM isn’t even close since AST has an entire card system to weave into their dps. Besides, even they have been here to complain about the changes and also don’t consider their “dps rotation” all that fun to start with so it’s easy to see what the state of whm and sch are in 5.0. (Although whm have been in this state and complaining a while now, they’re sad things haven’t changed and sch are dealing with the loss)

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I'll answer about AST first: The card system is a few button presses every 30s without much thoughts behind it. Not only you are not spamming them like you would for DPS skills, but cards are definitly not something to use exclusively during downtime. What AST specifically do during downtime is spam Malefic and apply one DoT. Cards are always being used without regards to being in downtime or not. They're a null factor.
So, sorry but no, AST is definitly not in a much better place than WHM when it comes to what you spam during downtime. Especially with currently one less DoT to manage. If anything, it's just slightly above. But nowhere near SCH, which is why it's definitly relevant to group WHM and AST together as "jobs that have very few skills to use during downtime". (And I'm not even talking about AoE DPS, where the gap is even larger between WHM/AST and SCH.)

On the subject of numbers now: Where are you getting these numbers from and how are you interpreting them? I suspect that you are looking at the number of "active" players who have CNJ/ACN/AST at max level. If that's the case, I direct you towards weapon collection, which is a much better metric to know what job people are actually playing, and by default includes max level while also removing the issue of ACN being tied to SMN and SCH.

Here's the numbers showing how much i380+ weapons are being used by each job (worldwide):
WHM: 23904 (49,1%)
SCH: 13667 (28,1%)
AST: 11115 (22,8%)

Almost half of the "endgame" (numbers are also in favor of WHM for weapons below i380) healer population plays the job with the least amount of "options" when it comes to do stuff during downtime (according to your definition. I would also include AST in there, but I don't even need to to make my point).
This, again, shows how much different the actual playerbase and the vocal minority on forums are. If the lack of "options" and "engagement" during downtime was such a big issue for the community as a whole, WHM wouldn't be that much played. Especially if we also consider how the "meta" impact jobs being played.
In short: if people play WHM that much, it means that your idea of "what's fun" within the healer population isn't as widly shared as you may think simply by looking at forums feedback.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

There’s also an argument to make about people who simply don’t care enough to give feedback and wether or not their lack of vocal opinion on the topic should even matter that much considering some of them may not even have an opinion. And does it even matter to any of them that the online presence is trying to readjust the kits a bit?

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It doesn't mean that the vocal minority should decide for these people (or think that they represent them). Again, remember Gordias. Loud people deciding for everyone, almost killing the raid scene entirely. Ignoring silent people has never been a good idea. And acting as if they share your thoughts is even worse.
Regardless, you just disproved your own point: you can't say that the forums "should give a pretty decent overview of what the healer community considers as fun" if you acknowledge the fact that silent people (the majority) have a different opinion - or no opinion at all. It's not because people don't speak up that they share your views on what's fun.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

So all in all. No let’s not chuck it down to only being the opinion of those posting. Let’s treat the forums for what they are: a feedback channel that expresses the sentiment of its overarching demographic.

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The opinions of those who provide feedback are just that. They do not represent anything else than their own voices.

To summarize, yes, you do speak for yourself. Your own subjective opinion on "what's fun" is yours and yours only. It's great if some people share that opinion and get behind it, but acting like that vocal minority represents anyone else's thoughts is definitly wrong.

The forums definitly don't speak for everyone, not even for a majority in a lot of cases. It has been shown countless times already, and once more today.
But again, speaking for yourself doesn't weaken your opinion. However, making wrong generalizations definitly does.

I'm going to start with the following statement as it seems to be core for you :

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Originally Posted by Fyce

The opinions of those who provide feedback are just that. They do not represent anything else than their own voices.

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This is just simply wrong.
If it were true we wouldn't care for CSAT, CES, NPS, TGW and other similar metrics. If you don't know what they are feel free to google but if that's the case, odds are you aren't knowledgeable enough to make claims on what the real scope of forum feedback is (edit: not meant as an attack, just giving perspective. Also a few metrics don't define customer satisfaction as a whole, but those are a good place to start). The fact is that for every person who voices their opinion on a forum or complain there are x number of people who don't say anything and that are just as dissatisfied. One complaint isn't just that one person, it's a bunch of other people who don't comment but feel the same way. Each industry and type of product will have varying degrees of participation from the community but for some reference numbers, 96% of unhappy customers usually won't complain. So the negative feedback you do get comes with the context that there are a lot of users behind each and every complaint you receive. The ratio of which depends on your other metrics.
There are also such metrics for satisfied customers and if you understand the customer feedback (and service) industry you'll understand how the context of publishing ShB data and getting forum feedback plays into that.
Of course other things need to be considered like CAC, LTV, etc, or complaints deltas over time etc...

The cool kid "vocal minority" gets a bad rap because media likes to cherry pick the most ridiculous and sensational stories. And then we all get a good laugh at how bat s* crazy the "vocal minority" is and how it doesn't represent the people. But that's definitely not how it should be generalized and certainly not what is happening here given the context mentioned above. Forums after an expansion news release acts similarly to a few different feedback channels all in one and should be taken seriously.

Beyond all this there's also what you do with the data and that follows a whole other set of principles. Including game design principles, a couple of which were thrown out the window for ShB healers. (There's way more to product design which I will not get into now)

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Why do I talk about Scholar in a thread with people mostly discussing about how SCH is getting impacted by the changes? I don't understand your question...

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You originally said way more people would be playing SCH? I don't see how that relates to anything? The only way I made sense of it was if you were referring to all the SCH complaints we currently have somehow reflecting the ratio of SCHs to WHMs to ASTs out there. Which of course isn't true, as you said. Though you implied that what I said somehow entailed this (and for which I will refer you to the above or my previous post as an answer)

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Originally Posted by Fyce

The card system is a few button presses every 30s without much thoughts behind it. Not only you are not spamming them like you would for DPS skills, but cards are definitly not something to use exclusively during downtime.

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There might be a semantics issue here. Healing downtime is everything that essentially isn't a healing cast. So that includes cards, DPS, fairy placement/dissipation/recast, doing mechanics, etc.

To the argument that you only use them every now and then. That's exactly what the SCH skills that were pruned provided. Shadowflare was once every 60s, ED on average I would say was once every 45s for the demanding content, obviously more often if you had less to heal and/or were optimized. Not that different from cards.
In addition this allowed the dps gameplay to not suffer any clipping and/or missed weaving opportunities. AST still has these options because of the malefic cast time and cards.

Also my numbers come from FFXIV census (Statistics for May 2019, "Active" character classes)
And are CNJ vs SCH vs AST so no they don't mix up SCH and SMN.
Also worth noting your numbers don't look right considering fflogs alone has 40k healers clearing some alphascape before echo in standard comp (13k of which are WHM). To which you need to add all those that did it after the echo or with a non standard comp, didn't parse or are hidden, those that got their eureka weapon, those that cleared the last two ex trials (50k healers before echo with standard comp on Seryu) and those that just made a crafted weapon.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

I'm going to start with the following statement as it seems to be core for you :

This is just simply wrong.
If it were true we wouldn't care for CSAT, CES, NPS, TGW and other similar metrics. Actually one could say your statement also negates the value of surveys as well. If you don't know what they are feel free to google but odds are you aren't knowledgeable enough to make claims on what the real scope of forum feedback is. The fact is that for every person who voices their opinion on a forum or complain there are x number of people who don't say anything and that are just as dissatisfied. One complaint isn't just that one person, it's a bunch of other people who don't comment but feel the same way. Each industry and type of product will have varying degrees of participation from the community but for some reference numbers, 96% of unhappy customers usually won't complain. So the negative feedback you do get needs to keep in mind that there are a lot of users behind each and every complaint you receive. The ratio of which depends on your other metrics.
There are also such metrics for satisfied customers and if you understand the feedback and customer feedback (and service) industry you'll understand how the context of publishing ShB data and getting forum feedback plays into that.
Of course other things need to be considered like CAC, LTV, etc, or complaints deltas over time etc...

The cool kid "vocal minority" gets a bad rap because media likes to cherry pick the most ridiculous and sensational stories. And then we all get a good laugh at how bat crazy the "vocal minority" is and how it doesn't represent the people. But that's definitely not how it should be generalized and certainly not what is happening here given the context mentioned above. Forums after a game news release acts similarly to a few different feedback channels all in one.

Beyond all this there's also what you do with the data and that follows a whole other set of principles. Including game design principles, a couple of which were thrown out the window for ShB healers. (There's way more to product design which I will not get into now)

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You obviously seem to be way more knowledgeable than me on the technical details on the matter. But your explanation absolutly doesn't say why players' claims often doesn't correspond to actual ingame data of players habits. If I understood it correctly, you basically just said "if someone is unhappy and voice their opinion, they are not alone thinking that". Which is also true for satisfied people, who are actually less likely to actually express themselves.

I cannot be happy as long as this discrepency isn't solved. Aka.: If people dislike the poor variety in a Healer DPS kit, as it doesn't satisfy their need of getting enough challenge and engagement, then why are the majority of people playing WHM?

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Originally Posted by EaMett

You originally said way more people would be playing SCH if we went by the forums? I don't see how that relates to anything? The only way I made sense of it was if you were referring to all the SCH complaints we currently have somehow reflecting the ratio of SCHs to WHMs to ASTs out there. Which of course isn't true (and for which I will refer to the above or my previous post)

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That was not what I wanted to say, sorry if it wasn't clear. What I meant to say was: given WHM's superior popularity, SCH would logically be more popular if it was more like WHM. Another way of saying it would be to say that what some people like in SCH's kit is actually what puts a lot of people off.
That's something SE is very likely watching closely, because for them, it doesn't really matter if people leave the job if it then get picked up by a different demographic. They'd have got their adjusments completed to open the path for a much easier paradigm to develop stuff with, while not changing drastically how much people play the job.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

There might be a semantics issue here. Healing downtime is everything that essentially isn't a healing cast. So that includes cards, DPS, fairy placement/dissipation/recast.

To the argument that you only use them every now and then. That's exactly what the SCH skills that were pruned provided. Shadowflare was once every 60s, ED on average I would say was once every 45s for the demanding content, obviously more often if you had less to heal and/or were optimized. Not that different from cards.
In addition this allowed the dps gameplay to not suffer any clipping and/or missed weaving opportunities. AST has these options still because of the malefic cast time.

Also my numbers come from FFXIV census (Statistics for May 2019, "Active" character classes)
And are CNJ vs SCH vs AST so no they don't mix up SCH and SMN.
Also worth noting your numbers don't look right considering fflogs alone has 40k healers clearing some alphascape before echo in standard comp. To which you need to add all those that did it after the echo or with a non standard comp, didn't parse or are hidden, those that got their eureka weapon, those that cleared the last two ex trials (50k healers before echo with standard comp) and those that just made a crafted weapon.

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For AST cards: that's more a subjective issue. Even if it slightly plays on your APM and keeps your fingers a little bit more busy than a WHM during downtime, I clearly don't value that system as having such a higher engagement level as you do. At least currently. I definitly find the new ShB card system way more engaging. But that's another story. But even then, if Draw is on cooldown when comes a downtime... You're left with one DoT and one ST spell.
Whatever the case, I don't really need AST metrics to be able to claim how many people like WHM compared to SCH. If anything, AST is just the middleground.

FFXIV Census is quite incomplete. Max levels SCH include every single SMN who just unlocked the job, as SCH would be max level by default. This screws up the metric quite a lot. Which is why I pointed at weapons instead, as people collecting high iLv weapons for a job are definitly a better way to see if they actually play it.
FFlogs is also not a good metric when it comes to analysing how many people actually play the jobs, as it almost only covers the (parsing) raiding scene, which is itself quite small compared to the rest of the playerbase. Not even talking about Ultimate where numbers go down even more. This is also why I added the bit about the meta, which weights much more in a raid environment. I'm more interested in the FFXIV playerbase as a whole, in all content.

Check this instead: http://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurvey...m?world=Faerie
Since it's quite long to load pages, here's a pull from all servers when it comes to now many of each respective healer have a i380+ weapon.

9th Feb does mean that this census isn't as up to date as FFXIV Census, but for our purpose it's more than enough, as players habits when it comes to playing jobs shouldn't change much in the course of a few months without patches. I'd even say it's more relevant, as you don't have as much people going "I'll collect every weapon for every job, even if I don't play them" and "I'll level every job to max even if I don't play them", which happens a lot during content drought.

Point is: WHM is definitly very popular, despite the "boringness" forum people claim it is. So, if that "boringness" is fine for a lot of people, I think you can understand why I don't necessary trust the "vocal minority" when it makes a general claim such as "the community don't like the changes". And excuse me if I repeat myself, but Gordias is the prime example of the vocal people screwing everything for the actual majority. I don't really want something like that to happen again, so taking everything with a grain of salt is probably the safest bet.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Which is also true for satisfied people, who are actually less likely to actually express themselves.

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Yes this is absolutely correct. And similarly, it can be quantified. The ratio of satisfied posters to satisfied "silents" is higher than it is for unsatisfied posters too.
This is a little outside the scope of this forum's feedback but there are some caveats that come with it if you're curious. The main one being that an unsatisfied customer statistically will impact your company negatively enough to counterbalance the effect of a satisfied one. I can't remember the numbers that are usually thrown around but off the top of my head I think you need 2 satisfied to make up for 1 unsatisfied. It's obviously not as straightforward as that but you get the idea.
Also worth noting it isn't binary. You can be "meh" or you can be "cancel your service" levels of unsatisfied (and anything in between).

Other important things can be how many more complaints are here compared to SB release. Or how many more are in the healer forum than in the tank/dps ones? What is the nature of the complains (minor things, major gameplay complaints, change suggestions, angry mobs)? What language is used? etc..
All of these can be factored in to get a better idea. I urge anyone to have a look around the Tank and DPS forum. It's a different tune completely compared to the healer forum. And no it's not because "healers like to whine".

And of course IG player behavior. But this also comes with caveats since user behavioral patterns aren't always easy to interpret. A lot of new accounts are starting their healer career with WHM for example but how much of it has to do with the fact it's the default healer and how much has to do with the fact it's more straightforward to play? etc. Stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Another way of saying it would be to say that what some people like in SCH's kit is actually what puts a lot of people off.

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Census data aside, this is one of the sticking points. Game design theory would dictate that diversity within roles is good because you get to play the role you want but you have options depending on what you like (dots, weaving, nuking big skills, rng, etc. something easy or something harder but more rewarding). Balancing through homogenization however is always a bit of a design pitfall. Not to say it can't work but the contexts in which it does are limited. "Boring gameplay", "lack of options", "lack of player expression" (ability to take risks for rewards), and so forth are some of those pitfalls. All 3 of which we're currently dealing with.
With that said this is complex and it also has to factor in whether you want your class to have better design or be more popular.
Obviously people complaining today want better design.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

I clearly don't value that system as having such a higher engagement level as you do

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The real issue is that a lot of us have been asking for more engagement during downtime. Instead we got less. So at this point clinging to a semblance of what we had sounds better than nothing.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

FFXIV Census is quite incomplete. Max levels SCH include every single SMN who just unlocked the job, as SCH would be max level by default.

[...]

FFlogs is also not a good metric when it comes to analysing how many people actually play the jobs, as it almost only covers the (parsing) raiding scene, which is itself quite small compared to the rest of the playerbase

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Ok, I finally understand what you're getting at about the census. That sounds fair. With that said I can't bring myself to trust your data as it is either, because as you stated, FFLogs is a subset of the playerbase but still has more individual healers logged for Alphascape/seryu than your source seems to claim are even active. Something is off.

Furthermore this doesn't deal with the fact that the raiding community represents the playerbase that is most sensitive to nuances in gameplay and balancing in addition to being the defacto playerbase for a large portion of the content. Not exactly something you can overlook even if it's 1% of your playerbase because it's a significant portion of your content patches (savage, ex trials, ultimate). Which btw if it were really 1% SE wouldn't even have bothered with ultimate raids (I'm not saying this for you but there are others who really think it's 1%).

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Scholar AoE:
1) Before: Miasma, Bio II, Bane, Miasma II spam
2) After: Art of War spam

If you think that "1" is engaging, but "2" is a snoozefest, I don't know what to tell you.

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1) An man with a missing arm. Still bleeding.
2) A man cut in half. Also bleeding.

I don't think we have to agree that "1" is fine and healthy just to note that "2" is even less so.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

True. But when every post I see is "Healer dps gutted, healer dps destroyed, healers no longer fun", that is the impression I get. A certain implication that these changes are responsible for healer dps not being fun. And they're not - it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

So what's my point? The fun does not come from the number of different buttons you press and these changes make healers very trivially less engaging.

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Trivially less is still... less. We have no reason to be content with shrinkage or downgrades in the course of an expansion. And it hurts all the more when the gameplay was already... trivial.

But, let's put some perspective on this. Cleric Stance's rework was, in all honesty, a trivial change at best; it provided no difficulty, only bloat and convolution. Losing half your AoE dps kit, a third of your single target dps kit, and up to three quarters of your utility, on the other hand, is a significant change.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

1) An man with a missing arm. Still bleeding.
2) A man cut in half. Also bleeding.

I don't think we have to agree that "1" is fine and healthy just to note that "2" is even less so.

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True. But when every post I see is "Healer dps gutted, healer dps destroyed, healers no longer fun", that is the impression I get. A certain implication that these changes are responsible for healer dps not being fun. And they're not - it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

So what's my point? The fun does not come from the number of different buttons you press and these changes make healers very trivially less engaging. The bulk of the fun comes from the content you do (which will hopefully be designed around our new overpowered healing kits) and the act of balancing your healing and dps.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

it's been this way ever since the Cleric Stance rework.

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Yeah, Stormblood was bad enough, Shadowbringers is making it worse.

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Originally Posted by althenawhm

Yeah, Stormblood was bad enough, Shadowbringers is making it worse.

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Agreed, shadowbringers is really a regressive expansion for us at a glimpse so far.. and seeing Aplhinaud cast DPS as our healer in trusts and I swear if our role quests include dpsing, I'm just going to be like er.... wut.