6 Years without a healer?

[Deceptus]

The alternative is 6 years without a ranged DPS, and considering that we only had 2 ranged DPS as opposed to 3 healers, this makes sense.

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

[EaMett]

Well to be fair and to play devils advocate here. It’s entirely possible that the “support” classes are under represented in the player base and were a priority for them. If they only wanted to release two classes that left them having to choose between tank and healer. We now know which one they picked.

Of course this is only half the story. I highly suspect they have no idea how to introduce a new healer within their self imposed constraints. And I don’t see that changing in 2 more years unless they really revamped healers this expansion

[Greven]

I hope they will add an healer job before 6.0

[Dualgunner]

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

The role action separates casters and rangers, and Yoshi P himself separates casters and rangers.

[Darkpaw]

Actually rather interesting how everyone sees this as only healer balance being the reason. When he also stated that Gunbreaker as a tank was decided early because it was difficult to break down tank classes as MT and OT with 3 so they knew they wanted to bring in a tank job so they could balance that properly as two MT and two OT. As for people saying there are 5 or 6 ranged classes, while technically accurate it is also a falsehood. You have 3 or 4 counting BLU caster DPS, and 2 physical ranged DPS, and the physical ranged DPS haven't been balanced. Ever. So a new physical ranged DPS was actually needed so they could even attempt to balance that role. Now is that a good reason for no new healer. Eh, that's debatable, and more than likely probably not.

However, that is the answer that we were given and to some degree it is also understandable. I get the frustration of no new healer for six years, but I think their reasoning has been somewhat misrepresented whether that be by the dev team themselves or perhaps a translation error, or even just the community misunderstanding their words isn't important. But it seems to me that they are trying to balance everything out with this decision and not just worry about healer balance. So the lack of a new healer isn't stating that healers still need time to be balanced even though I'm sure there are still some issues to work out. More like it's important to balance everything else out before adding in a new healer.

[Hustensaft]

You have 3 or 4 counting BLU caster DPS, and 2 physical ranged DPS, and the physical ranged DPS haven't been balanced. Ever. So a new physical ranged DPS was actually needed so they could even attempt to balance that role. Now is that a good reason for no new healer. Eh, that's debatable, and more than likely probably not.

DPS are selected by what provides the highest raid DPS... adding DNC into the equation changes absolutely nothing about which of the three ranged physical DPS is being taken to a raid - you just have one more spec competing for one of the four damage slots.

You can even argue that adding a new physical DPS job adds more restriction to raid setups. MNK and RDM have physical support skills - while BLM and SMN do not - and 7 out of 10 DPS jobs deal physical damage.

[ForgottenScholar]

I think these debates are skirting the larger issue, when he refers to healer balance it prob isnt just the small area of raid balance (as for the larger community only a small % access this content regularly) and more their roles within themselves and their identifiers. WHM is supposed to be the pure healer class with the most OGCD heals, SCH is supposed to be the dps healer, DOT dps primary, with healing pet for a buffer and AST is supposed to be the buffing healing class able to change between regen or shield healer. Now in current format and to an outside player is this the case? I do not think so, not by a long shot and with attitudes always quoting the meta it is extremely hard for a new player, from maybe another MMO thats not doing well (say isnt there one made by Blizzard? lol), to find the right healing role to do.
SE has had to add a trust system (in shadowbringers) to aid in dps queue times which is an indication of diversity on the roles, balance to me might be better than adding another healer to a system that isnt clearly working, Time will clearly tell. But the most vocal of any community is usually the smallest demographic, therefore we have no idea how many of the larger communities do not like healer roles due to the current way their balance is. This has always been the case for tanks too and they are going down the route of MT OT to help with that and need 4 jobs in order to get done.

[Gemina]

Omg, just shut up about this already I swear...
Better pray they actually change something this time instead of just further unbalancing things... though I have to admit, with that 'make WHM easier' quote floating around my expectations are in the negative numbers until proven wrong on that one, too. Still, no new healer is the best outcome and all the outrage about it is just plain laughable.

This is a discussion forum, and everyone has a right to express how they feel about the situation. If it is grating your ears/eyeballs then turn away. This is a big issue, and we're not just going to sit idly by and ignore it.

Balance is their excuse, but it is not the true reason why we are not getting a 4th healer. We are not getting a 4th healer at least at the launch of 5.0 for a myriad of reasons. One of them is AST. The addition of this job in 3.0 really screwed things up. It showcased that they could not find a way to make a 3rd healer truly unique giving it the base skills of WHM and tossing in a card mechanic. It is now over-tuned and because it has nearly the entire base toolkit of WHM, leaving WHM out in the cold.

Role skills is another. An extremely flawed design due to an antiquated and stubborn FFXI/FFXIV 1.0 mentality of thinking such a system works in this mmo. No role has suffered from this atrocious design more than healers.

PvE content design is a third reason that has also backed them into a corner which does not allow healer A to have distinctive advantages/disadvantages in comparison to Healer B and Healer C. Since all three healers can easily meet the healing requirements, the only way to accomplish this is to diversify their DPS kits and they did a poor job with this as well; once again leaving WHM out in the cold.

Another reason: BLU. The devs made the decision to allocate time and resources into its implementation which could have been spent fixing this healer cobweb we're entangled in. This then leads to reason five: neglect. I don't know if they see the healer community as the least desirable role to play based off some BS chart or other form of figures and numbers but a decision was made to leave the healer status quo as is. See reason number three. What really sucks is that the limited job concept failed. BLU was clearly the wrong choice, and while there are some players who are fine with it, there are far more who wanted this job to be viable for duties in very much the same way the healer community wanted a 4th healer.

We already KNOW that healers are unbalanced. This isn't news to anybody. The problem are the reasons why they are unbalanced. The circumstances that have lead to the state the healer community is currently in. The dev team still has my support because I sympathize with the amount of pressure that is on them to bring satisfactory content to so many different playstyles, but things like this break down those supportive pillars due to feelings of being underappreciated.

I can't even begin to comprehend how you think not having a new healer is the best outcome of this situation when it is the outcome of an extremely bad circumventive situations the devs have put themselves in.

[Darkpaw]

snip

Well the thing is all we can do is speculate why they are not giving us another healer, and while you make a really well constructed and well reasoned argument the fact is that we don't know. All of those things you listed could very easily be the exact reasons why they decided to not give us a 4th healer. Full job role roster balance could be another. The fact is that only the development team truly knows why they made these decisions. Anything we say is just speculation and guess work, and guess work no matter how well educated is still guess work without facts we can verify.

We know they have stated they are planning to revamp/replace the role system and I don't disagree it's unfair to healers more than any of the other roles.

I don't know that I can say that BLU is a waste. Blu and the limited system were an experiment for them and I won't condemn them for trying out new things whether they fall flat or not. It gives them ideas of new things to try in the future that could bring in something truly special in the future.

Ast I can agree that they've always had problems with balancing, and usually when it gets close to being in a decent spot it's only because WHM gets pushed out into the cold. They really need to define set parameters and boundaries between these two classes.

I don't believe this was the best outcome possible but I do think it's probably the most practical outcome they can see for now, and more than likely it probably leaves a pretty bitter taste in their mouths because they know they made a decision that alienates a section of their playerbase. We just have to hope that there's a bigger reason for it in the grand scheme of things.

[Lambdafish]

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

I made the distinction between ranged and caster in my post, and you should know that there is a massive difference between the two types of DPS if you play the game. Regardless, I edited my comment for clarification