You can blame the bean-counters and parsers for this. If a job can't outparse the flavor-of-the-month job, it's shunned by the elitist forums and the sheep follow suit. Afterwards, S-E is compelled to make the job desirable to these malcontents.To be fair, that's pretty much what they're doing already. The jobs are slowly becoming more and more homogenized and losing their own identity in the process. When every job starts playing the same as every other job, there are things that need fixing. Just look at the healer changes during the 3.0 update if you want further evidence.
I'm amused to see that some people think the issue is entirely about movement. It may be part of it, but a large part of the problem with WM is the gameplay changes. To quote someone who succinctly summed up the problem:
If you still think you're super elite and think they need to adjust, think of a ham-fisted change to your favorite job. Now picture yourself reacting to said ham-fisted change. That's how some BRD mains feel about WM.For WM here, the need to stand still wasn't too big of a deal for me because I didn't move around that much in FCoB or any content really. The introduction of a cast bar though, puts in some very unfavorable interactions with how bard functioned in 2.0. Their oGCDs start clipping with each other and now their gameflow feels extremely fragmented when you (and you will) double up on a oGCD inbetween a weaponskill because of a bloodletter reset. It's impossible to catch straighter shot procs unless you purposely delay your weapon skill (and using a oGCD inbetween doesn't help either), and repelling shot will interrupt your cast time if you're under the influence of fey wind or just straight up have too much SkS from gear/weapon. And then there's the animations...when you look at ones like empyreal arrow and windbite you can clearly tell they were not meant to clip into an oGCD at the start of their animation... Bard went from a fast-paced reactive-proc class to a slower-pace who can't pick up on half of their reactive procs
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I'd chalk this up to the smaller metagame FFXIV uses to balance jobs rather than the number crunchers. Looking at WoW (because we're on the topic of healers):
Holy Priests: Direct heals, AoE heals, AoE cleanse
Discipline Priests: Barriers, effects that increase healing received
Resto Druid: HoTs, abilities that make HoTs detonate into big heals, channeled AoE heals
Resto Shaman: PBAOE HoTs (Healing Stream Totem), Smart heals (targeted heals that heal target and 2 additional allies with lowest HP), direct heals
Holy Paladin: Conal AoE heals, reliance on crit heals, Beacon of Light (basically Clemency but as a permanent buff and can be placed on an ally)
Mistweaver Monk: Placed healing bubbles (kind of like the exploding balls in A4, but they heal you when you run into them), channeled heals, smart heals via their statue
There may be common denominators between these 6 healing classes (all can rez, all can cleanse debuffs, all have some form of direct healing), but they are largely defined by aesthetics and mechanics. This is the direction I was sort of hoping they would take. I can't think of any raid that would turn away any of these healers away, and at least in my time spent raiding, all fit within the meta well enough.
* The sad thing is that FFXIV turned RDM into a turret, and people think that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to combine sword and magic into something more, not spend the bulk of gameplay spamming spells and jump into melee for only 3 GCDs before scurrying back to the back line like good little casters.
* Design ideas:
Red Mage - COMPLETE (https://tinyurl.com/y6tsbnjh), Chemist - Second Pass (https://tinyurl.com/ssuog88), Thief - First Pass (https://tinyurl.com/vdjpkoa), Rune Fencer - First Pass (https://tinyurl.com/y3fomdp2)
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