4.1 and us healers

[Erakir]

Come on Ghish, that WHM thread was exceedingly important as far as development goes.

You know as well as the rest of us that the WHM feedback on lilies and Plenary Indulgence at the 20% numbers we were initially given was a point extremely worthy of discussion regardless of WHM's current standing - And the current approach to lily use as far as Savage goes still further emphasizes that they're really lackluster in general aside from prepping divine benisons, even with 100% proc chances. That outcry with the seeming lack of development time / focus it received plus the current game situation on top of the types of responses we got (And the insistence on the 'pure healer' line that we've heard so much since then) - it's entirely what people should have expected. They then went and reworked PI and proceeded to design savage pretty much around having places to fit in that ability specifically, as the skill was initially about as unreliable as everyone anticipated, even though you could get decent use out of it by, well, hitting more cures again.

WHM's strength in MP economy from spell cost changes and a few other changes + Thin Air doesn't make that thread's underlying issues invalid. The only thing we know is that WHM was not DOA on launch for other reasons - MP economy being a main one plus SCH's relative strength as well, but they should have learned a lot from that whole ordeal. It was pretty important for that rage and backlash to be channeled somewhere Square could see, particularly after how things had become since 3.4. I wasn't even around shortly after Midas till close to when Stormblood came out, but it was clear what the community perception had become - a developer-ignored job with their niche chipped further and further away throughout an entire expansion with nothing to compensate, leaving a very worried playerbase who had already experienced certain jobs having 100% cemented raid slots that had also been told by tons of other players that their concerns for the future were just invalid and WHM's just wanted to be overpowered powerhouses. When Square showcased what they did with WHM, the pot simply boiled over. They royally angered MANY WHMs out there and even if people don't have great solutions or are just ranting in general, the devs need to be aware when such a strong reaction occurs so they can re-evaluate their plans and decide if they want to tweak things. That was NOT a minor, daily forum occurrence, and all the doom and gloom posts should have been taken as, "Dear lord people are extremely upset" by development, which is important information for a company despite what some raiders might say.

And much of it could have been avoided if they had considered being a little more transparent and upfront about some of the changes (which we seem to be getting here, although as a mid-expansion patch there's understandably a lot less to cover). Instead, we got repeated lines about pure healer and "It'll be okay" which is not the PR response to soothe a sudden influx of troubled, concerned, angry players. They fueled their own flames with that instead of containing the fire.

That WHM turned out fine doesn't mean much here specifically because much more changed from what we were shown (including the MP costs of our DPS, if I recall correctly? Might be wrong there). Whether that thread influenced it or not - neither you or I will ultimately know. I'm in the camp that imagines way more thought was given to those tweakings after a 300 page thread suddenly popped up in the forum where our usual traffic involves a recycled healer DPS thread every couple of months that gains a couple of pages a week. Meanwhile, WHM is stuck with what is possibly the worst trait in the game at level 68 if you run the numbers on its proc chance vs cure usage in raids or dungeons + the actual proc itself and what it changes for a WHM (absolutely nothing). It's still pretty much trash if you calculate it with 100% cure spam. We coulda talked about that if we didn't have to spend a month on why the lily design we were initially shown was...not good.

I'm open to seeing changes in practice and this go-around in particular doesn't really bother me at first glance (and as you say there could be other healer changes we simply haven't seen, or maybe not), but when it comes to healer design and balancing approaches over the past two years or so, the last thing I've personally gotten from the team is a trusty sense of confidence.

[Ghishlain]

I don't understand why you think MP cost matters in this case, scholar has slightly higher mp cost at the moment and SE promise will reduce mp in coming 4.1.
And most important thing is, aetherflow returns MP constantly and faries' healing is FREE and automated.

You do realize that it's illogical to compare about two spells side by side with no other kit interactions, effectively demand that one spell matches the other without considering other differences in the spell and/or kit interactions, then start a counter argument around considering whole kits, yes?

-snip-

A lot of posters were proclaiming that WHM would've been dead on arrival and that was the crux I was aiming for. In reflection now, we know that would've not been the case. Just to reiterate some of what you've said, Thin Air is amazing, the changes to Divine Benison makes it much more usable over Stoneskin, and the change from Shroud of Saints to Lucid Dreaming offer WHM much MP sustainability and removed WHMs one of two largest flaws - MP consumption. The other flaw I see is a lack of raid utility but to be fair, I'm honestly okay with this given high DPS and nigh infinite MP. S-E certainly missed the mark with both PI and Lilies on its inception but by removing the one critical weakness to WHM sustainability, they've pushed WHM to be a very competitive healer as a no frills healing bombshell.

My complaint towards that initial mess of 4.0-pre-release is people being non-constructive with their comments and spreading misinformation. I keenly remember a few posters doing ability counts and proclaiming that WHM kit continues to be pruned and pruned and pruned without having replacements. Yet when you get down to the nitty gritty and look at each kit logically, WHM did indeed have less abilities but not 10+ less abilities that some posters were proclaiming. It's information like this that doesn't give the developers good insight on how to constructively change things.

With the above being said, I do feel it's important to be continue to be critical of changes but at the same time don't start to second guess what could be happening until you get to see all the changes in their entirety. It's difficult to give a thoughtful and constructive response until we see the entirety of the changes. I am also be cautious about changes from the development team in the healing department due to these missteps that you documented in your post. However, I feel someone claiming that we're moving towards the healer imbalance that was shown in 3.4 does feel a bit extreme and premature at this juncture without more information.

[era1Ne]

You do realize that it's illogical to compare about two spells side by side with no other kit interactions, effectively demand that one spell matches the other without considering other differences in the spell and/or kit interactions, then start a counter argument around considering whole kits, yes?

Spot on. You have to look at the complete toolkit for healers and not compare skills for themselves.

However, I feel someone claiming that we're moving towards the healer imbalance that was shown in 3.4 does feel a bit extreme and premature at this juncture without more information.

As i recall they overbuffed ast for 3.4 on purpose with the reason that he was technically fine with 3.3, but most of the people didn't want to use the class, since he was not as good before. An practice often used in games. Could be wrong, tho. Was a long time ago.