Dps As Healer

[Watachy]

I can easely understand why those healers tell you to get off if they kept being called various names during their learning ^^"

DPSing as a healer is a thing that need practice, if i see someone trying by struggling to keep a good DPS and the party alive i won't mind the fact that he prefer to stay focused on healing.
But as we stated before there is no real content out of Savage that requires a lot of healing.

Plus i just hate the lazy guys, you see easily the people that are trying and the ones /following with netflix on.

That's why i have to tag as a healer everywhere when i go on DF, too many lazy healers with there "let me play (be lazy) the way i want"

[Miste]

This is not entirely true. Based on parses uploaded, both Scholar and Astro are taken nearly 50% more frequently compared to White Mage. That means it isn't just speed runners, but a larger portion of the raid community as a whole. It largely stems from the fact White Mage is, currently, a weaker version of Astro. Whether they ultimately weaken Astro's healing or not, it needs some form of drawback. At the moment, there is simply no weakness to Astro and it's ridiculous utility.

FFlogs? You can't use that as a tool to judge frequency because not everyone uses it. More hardcore/competitive speed runs groups upload than normal groups or pug groups. So it would automatically be skewed.

It would be the same as judging the forums as a good indicator of the whole community even when a lot don't even come here or post here.

I've been part of the raid community since launch and I've never seen WHM's have any issues joining groups. I also raid on it from 2.0 to 3.0 and in 3.0 too so I have experience being one. If it was such large part of the community refusing 100% to take WHMs I would have seen some of it by now.

Also I never said AST doesn't need a drawback I said before they can nerf the cards or buff WHM utility np. Nerfing their healing potency to be weaker than WHM and SCH is a bad idea though. None of the healers should be weaker than the others at their primary function.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

FFlogs? You can't use that as a tool to judge frequency because not everyone uses it. More hardcore/competitive speed runs groups upload than normal groups or pug groups. So it would automatically be skewed.

It would be the same as judging the forums as a good indicator of the whole community even when a lot don't even come here or post here.

I've been part of the raid community since launch and I've never seen WHM's have any issues joining groups. I also raid on it from 2.0 to 3.0 and in 3.0 too so I have experience being one. If it was such large part of the community refusing 100% to take WHMs I would have seen some of it by now.

Also I never said AST doesn't need a drawback I said before they can nerf the cards or buff WHM utility np. Nerfing their healing potency to be weaker than WHM and SCH is a bad idea though. None of the healers should be weaker than the others at their primary function.

Likewise, we cannot use your claim of constantly seeing White Mages in Savage pugs because it's entirely anecdotal. I, for instance, see more and more parties outright mandating an Astro even over Scholar. FFlogs may not be a perfect representation, but it's the only numerical source we have. Keep in mind, your numbers are uploaded regardless if you even have a parse installed. If someone in your party does, you'll be on FFlogs should they choose to upload. And you might be amazed at how many pugs have a parse nowadays.

Because White Mage has always remained a stable in the raid tier. Only Creator has seen their sharp decline due to Astro's vastly superior utility. Using the same FFlog metric, it supports the notion Astro was sorely ignored throughout Gordias and Midas. The only outliner is Creator.

Doing so only homogenizes all three healers and robs their uniqueness. The only way White Mage can compete with Astro currently is to receive an equivalent to Balance. Otherwise, it will be increasingly ignored in favour of the other two healers. For comparison sake, the DPS roles are not made equal nor are tanks. Monks pull higher personal DPS over their melee counterparts and Warrior vastly outperforms Paladin or Dark Knight in raw DPS. Why couldn't this apply to healers?

[Ghishlain]

None of the healers should be weaker than the others at their primary function.

Random question since I've been seeing this go back and forth a bit between yourself and your opposition:

These are just arbitrary numbers, but if AST and SCH's were able to do approximately 500 HPS and WHM was able to do 700 HPS and the content only required 450 HPS, would you still be opposed to a lower healer potency for higher utility despite still being able to handle the HPS requirements just fine?

While I do believe all content should be able to be handled by all healer types, weaker potency doesn't' necessarily mean a job is incapable of handling it.

[Miste]

These are just arbitrary numbers, but if AST and SCH's were able to do approximately 500 HPS and WHM was able to do 700 HPS and the content only required 450 HPS, would you still be opposed to a lower healer potency for higher utility despite still being able to handle the HPS requirements just fine?

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though? The co-healer will also have to deal with your lower healing potency and it makes the content not only harder for you but for them and the rest of your group. You need to be more skilled at the game and the job the lower your healing potency goes even if it is still above minimum the devs created it for.

Most players in this game choose the path of least resistance and if one or two out of the three healer jobs available is weaker at their primary purpose then they start getting locked out of groups like when HW first launched and AST was too weak at their heals.

To lower the healing potency for AST and SCH means that the devs would have to tune the fights around the lower potency healers. This would make WHM have way more healing than necessary and therefore way easier for them to heal. What does this accomplish exactly? People keep saying WHM has more healing than necessary (but lacking utility) right now but this just adds onto that and WHM would still be lacking utility and would have just useless excess healing power.

Either that or basically you guys just want the main compositions to be WHM + SCH or WHM + AST instead of what we have now which is SCH + WHM or SCH + AST because if they cut AST and SCH healing potency to be below WHM than most groups won't do SCH + AST since that is both the low potency healers and less safe and you would need more skill to do it without failing.

Likewise, we cannot use your claim of constantly seeing White Mages in Savage pugs because it's entirely anecdotal.

That's fine. I admit I shouldn't have used the word never it was incorrect. Only SE can say whether or not WHMs are not being allowed into groups enough because they are the only ones with the statistics. In my experience I've never seen it happen and while it is possible it happens sometimes nerfing AST healing potency isn't the way to fix it. You don't need to crap on AST to fix WHM.

For comparison sake, the DPS roles are not made equal nor are tanks. Monks pull higher personal DPS over their melee counterparts and Warrior vastly outperforms Paladin or Dark Knight in raw DPS. Why couldn't this apply to healers?

It seems like they are planning to change WAR from what SE said recently about it. So they actually seem to be heading into homogenization whether certain people like it or not.

You can also see this with the AST Nocturnal buffs recently. Most compositions are SCH + AST or SCH + WHM and SE wants AST + WHM to be good enough as well so they keep trying to make people use that composition by making Nocturnal stronger.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though?

Because that one healer offers more than the other that ONLY heals.
AST shouldn't be able to heal as much as WHM and offer utility. Likewise, WHM shouldn't offer utility while healing more than everyone else.
That balance needs to be in place, one healer shouldn't be able to do everything with no drawbacks like AST can currently.

These are just arbitrary numbers, but if AST and SCH's were able to do approximately 500 HPS and WHM was able to do 700 HPS and the content only required 450 HPS

This example from Ghishlain is exactly what I'm trying to convey.
With ASTs current buffing power, they should have lower healing potency, but not so low that they can't clear content. It should, however, be harder to heal than a WHM who specializes in only healing.
It'll also create an identity for both healers.

Also when Yoshi P was asked about healer balance and was told that AST has the same healing potency as WHM, he replied "for now". Lowering AST healing potency is quite possibly something being discussed at SE right now. It would be the better option than giving WHM utility like AST and destroying anything unique between them.

I understand AST came from hard times, and even the thought of nerfing them now probably sounds crazy, but it needs it. AST offers too much to the party right now.

It's worth a try, really. Their toolkit even reflects a playstyle that emphasizes needing more heals. Lower MP costs, higher MP restoration, spells that cut MP costs. This is all Implying that AST would need the extra MP because they should be healing more often.
If things stay the same, then we'd need to cut their MP restoration in half, raise their spell costs and lower their spell speed increase when in diurnal. Their toolkit is still based off a lower healing potency playstyle, but if you want their healing potency to stay the same as WHM, their tools need to reflect the bigger heals.

[Ghishlain]

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though? The co-healer will also have to deal with your lower healing potency and it makes the content not only harder for you but for them and the rest of your group. You need to be more skilled at the game and the job the lower your healing potency goes even if it is still above minimum the devs created it for.

Most players in this game choose the path of least resistance and if one or two out of the three healer jobs available is weaker at their primary purpose then they start getting locked out of groups like when HW first launched and AST was too weak at their heals.

To lower the healing potency for AST and SCH means that the devs would have to tune the fights around the lower potency healers. This would make WHM have way more healing than necessary and therefore way easier for them to heal. What does this accomplish exactly? People keep saying WHM has more healing than necessary (but lacking utility) right now but this just adds onto that and WHM would still be lacking utility and would have just useless excess healing power.

Either that or basically you guys just want the main compositions to be WHM + SCH or WHM + AST instead of what we have now which is SCH + WHM or SCH + AST because if they cut AST and SCH healing potency to be below WHM than most groups won't do SCH + AST since that is both the low potency healers and less safe and you would need more skill to do it without failing.

I was playing more devil's advocate than anything else with my post. I personally don't mind the lower potency as long as the utility provided is powerful (IE, AST's 3.0 heal kit combined with their 3.4 utility kit - probably keep the changes to Lightspeed, Synestra, and Collective Unconsciousness too) as long as they can meet the proper checks. Then I would leave it up to the players to decide what they want to do - safer healing for longer fights or shorter fights with the potential to skip mechanics that'll make healing easier (assuming they maintain current battle content design).

The key thing to me is maintaining uniqueness of each healer while ensuring they're viability. Unfortunately AST's viability was questionable at the onset of 3.0 due to (1) AST's kit and (2) the high tuning of Gordias. Since 3.0, both of these items have changed dramatically. If you took AST's kit as I spoke in the parenthesis, I bet they would do just fine in the 3.4 Creator tier.

And yes, while it's true there will always be a maximum optimized composition, I think there will be enough midcore groups out there to tackle content with any composition they desire as long as it's clear they have the chance to clear it.

To me the largest detriment to taking a WHM right now is that it's too similar to AST (or rather, AST's kit was made to mimic WHM's kit far too well) and thus without any defining trait, WHM gets left in the dust for a clearly superior choice.

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM or 2 Tank / 4 DPS / AST + SCH though some of the ideas mentioned in another thread are suitable to me too - someone mentioned each tier of Aero providing a different debuff that increase specific damage types which I like a lot too.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

That's fine. I admit I shouldn't have used the word never it was incorrect. Only SE can say whether or not WHMs are not being allowed into groups enough because they are the only ones with the statistics. In my experience I've never seen it happen and while it is possible it happens sometimes nerfing AST healing potency isn't the way to fix it. You don't need to crap on AST to fix WHM.

Fair enough. I also didn't intend to apply FFlogs is the end all be all. Just something to glance at to notice potential trends. Our experiences likely differ because of our datacenters. I hear Primal is much less min/maxed focused. Aether... is, xD

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though?

To properly compensate for the utility they bring. If healers were balanced in such a way, you are then making a choice between higher overall damage while putting greater pressure on your DPS and tanks to perform well over a safer raid with comparably less damage. The former allows easier mechanic skips whereas the latter better ensures you survive. At the moment, it boils down to "which two healers work the best together."

It seems like they are planning to change WAR from what SE said recently about it. So they actually seem to be heading into homogenization whether certain people like it or not.

While changes hopefully make PLD/DRK a more viable comp, it would be entirely boring design if all three tanks performed nearly identically. The issue currently isn't Warrior being the superior OT but that it has literally no drawbacks. If I recall, the devs even admitted liking the idea Paladin is better suited for psychical based fights whereas Dark Knight favours magic. If that philosophy were applied to healers, it might play out as noted above.

The supposed idea between each healer's identity is:

White Mage: Raw healing; high base damage; poor MP sustainability
Scholar: Phenomenal sustainability; strong support mitigation; weaker base damage and healing
Astro: Excellent utility; balanced everything else

If all three healers are homogenized, it more or less becomes "what animations do you like better?" I'm not saying it wouldn't work. I, personally, would find it boring though.

[Miste]

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM

I definitely won't ever agree with your ideas then :x

That's a terrible idea. It completely removes a healer slot because WHM healing is so powerful? You aren't serious with this right? :/

You think AST is broken right now cause of Balance Cards? All groups will go the 5 DPS route since it adds far more DPS than any other composition.

So after this you might as well delete SCH and AST from the game and change the game party composition to 2 tanks, 5 dps, and 1 healer for all content.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM

No, no, no. Now I'm with Miste on this one. We have seen exactly what happens when you design content where one of the roles isn't necessary. Zurvan EX is a mess because the off tank has nothing to do, thus people omit them for an extra DPS and expect to skip Soar. If White Mage could solo heal content, you'd have no reason whatsoever to ever bring another healer since they couldn't possibly contribute what a dedicated fifth DPS would. If they happened, I guarantee even casual raiders would push for White Mage only groups.