An interview with Yoshida and his thoughts on healers in 5.0

[Yuyuka3]

AST is perfect and fun healer that can adapt to his co-healer. It's not a copy of WHM ... It's a WHM 2.0 or even 3.0, it's an evolution of your boring lackfull WHM.

If you want to rework something, rework WHM.

It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

[Deceptus]

It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

[Seoleim]

I'm just a casual dungeon/raid healer, I don't really do any of the savage content but I sort of feel as if AST is missing it's own identity a bit. WHM is the bursty, reactive healer. SCH is the shielding and damage prevention healer. AST has buffs and can become an inferior copy of the other 2 jobs. That's not exactly a great draw to me. Sure it's flexible and that's alright, but at the same time it has the "jack of all trades, master of none" thing going for it which isn't such a great thing for a limited healer pool. Worse yet is if 2 AST's are in a group their best feature, the cards, don't stack. So 1 healer is gimped right out of the gate. If the draw is supposed to be it's card buffs then really give those suckers a punch. Double the strength of them so people really feel the impact when you put that 20% damage, crit or cast speed up on a Black Mage for example.

If they use the stars and constellations to heal then perhaps a job gauge that reflects that is in order. What about a rotating star chart that would change your ability effects depending on the alignment? This could replace the Sects they have now so that you are constantly shifting between Diurnal and Nocturnal mode that makes you adjust your healing on the fly. Sure it would be complex but that's not a bad thing when you look at how easy WHM is to play. Diurnal could have the same effect it does now while Nocturnal could boost your card abilities. Half the cooldown speed of draws, you get the ability to Redraw 1 more time before the ability goes on CD, chance to not erase the card you just used... stuff like that. Sure would be more enjoyable to me over what they are now.

[EaMett]

SE have painted themselves into a corner with the «*every healer and healer combo should be equal in the face of every encounter*» moto. They’re so desperate for equality that they can’t create new healers for fear that some combos wouldn’t work as well as others.

AST is a perfect example. They already had two good healers and couldn’t come up with another that would synergize equally with both whm and sch. So they made a class that could switch between both.

Until they get rid of this logic we will never get a new healer, bottom line.

[EaMett]

It’s also part of the reason why we’re penalized for bringing dupes. Just saying

[Ceasaria]

It's a WHM with cards and some SCH stuff tacked one, not more, not less. Always was, is, and always will be unless they change it.
Why does WHM need to get overhauled completely? IT'S BEEN THERE FIRST! AST is the copy of WHM, not the other way round. AST should have NEVER been implemented the way it was, anyone with half a brain could see its design leading to problems.
If you cannot see the problem, you are part of the problem yourself.

You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

Some have spend to much time in the Loch gathering salt...

[RyuDragnier]

And yet for AST and other jobs, it's not like we have given suggestions for years capable of resolving the differents problems...
I can understand the problem with AST, but you need to understand that SCH is untouchable too because of the fairy, the crit sdlo spread, etc.
And because of that, AST noct which is poorly efficient and can't take the spot of SCH, and inevitably because of his utility will (potentially) outshine WHM and be preferable to pick over WHM.

So to sum up, WHM issues is because of AST issues which is because of SCH issues.
Resolve SCH 1st, then AST, and finally WHM.
After that, we should be able to look at the 3 and be able to balance them well.

The "problem" with SCH is that it has always had its identity. The dev team looked at it, knew what they wanted, and have stuck with it since 2.0. It's perfectly built, it hasn't been anything other than its identity, and that identity is invaluable because WHM and AST can't copy its kit. What AST needs is to be something that can compete with it, namely strengthening its support capabilities while dropping its healing potential to compensate. It already has some of the best support, it shouldn't have burst healing on par with WHM (outside of Earthly Star).

[Yuyuka3]

You were doing so well until you had to add that snarky last line. . .

Sorry, it's just that reading the same old bullshit from always the exact same people is pissing me off big time at this point. In part because there is no real discourse to be had. It also doesn't help that I repeated the same three lines of text above that remark over and over again like a broken record over the past 4 years; my patience is running extremely thin at this point.

Seriously... I will never get people insisting that WHM is the one who needs to change fundamentally. Why should it yield to the copy? It makes no sense to me. AST should have been unique from the start. They completely messed up everything by lazily copy-pasting WHMs kit, then tacking some card mechanic and some SCH on, and call it a day. Why not try something else? There are so many possibilities and examples from other MMOs, or, heck, even the FF series itself, there honestly was no need for this garbage decision. Yet somehow, WHM takes all the blame when it is the established class here, not AST... It's not really fair, and it honestly drives me up the walls.

Do I want WHM to get something more than just personal DPS and healing (that, let's be honest here, the other two healers are on par with, or even surpass)? HELL YES!
I even got some ideas I think might work for the job, like, for example, a DH group buff. IIRC, that's something nobody has yet, and that would work really, really well. But yeah, I'm totally waiting for tacking that on AST, as they did with the crit buff we asked for pre-3.0 and that went to SCH instead...
They also need to overwork this horrid Lily system; heck, they could even make that into the mechanic that differentiates WHM from the other healers in a way! I'm fine with almost anything at this point, really.
And, for the love of the Twelve, overwork this useless garbage trait that is Secret of the Lily II -.-

[Niroken]

I wondered when they announced AST as a new healer how they could possibly fit in with the perfect synergy that WHM and SCH had in 2.0. Now here we are with a WHM, SCH, WHM/SCH that are so homogenized for the sake of balance that it would require a rework of a class and a massive change of the role to make it so we can even get another healer. The developers just didn't understand how they were going to balance tanks and healers going forward.

[Hustensaft]

A more detailed version of the OP-quote: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...w_with_yoship/

ただ、ヒーラー3ジョブのバランスというのは、最後まで苦労しているところで、どうしてもフェアリーの分だけ学者が飛び抜けるところがあって、5.0でまたバランスを取り直すにしても、MTとSTといった役割の違いがなく、バリアヒーラー、ピュアヒーラーというくくりはあるにせよ、この状況で4ジョブにして取り切れるのかといったときに、3ジョブのバランスを徹底したほうがいいのかなと。

However, we were still struggling with balancing the three existing healers, and SCH was always dominant because of the fairy. Even if we re-balanced them again for 5.0, and even if they also have the shield healer vs pure healer dichotomy, we thought it would be better to solidify the balance between the three healers instead of trying to balance four. By adding a third ranged DPS, we could round out the number of jobs per role.

Don't really know what to say here?

Between thinking that WHM is to hard and they want to make it easier, and that SCH is strong because of the fairy... kind of shows how little understanding they have of their healer jobs...