Dear SE, I am a Healer

[Penthea]

to be fair the whole we're adding a tank because we need more tanks so we can balance them followed by the we're not adding a healer because we need to balance them first before adding more left me scratching my head for a second.

I need to understand the reasoning from their point of view. what is so different between tanking and healing that for tanks they need more tanks to make things balanced while it works the opposite way for healers?

Maybe it was the wording... i dunno

There is always a MT and an OT. SE have said that because of this having an odd number of tanks causes imbalance. Two tanks will inevitably be competing for one spot, whether that's MT or OT, which then tends to leave one tank viewed as much less desirable. Having an even number of possible MTs and OTs would balance this. Well this is what they say. Whether this will happen or not remains to be seen.

There is no main healer or off-healer unless a team specifically decides this. Because of the fluidity of how healer roles are assigned within different teams this makes healers more complicated to balance. Some teams split the healing evenly, some have one heal more while the other does dps more, some will do either depending on the fight. And others heal as little as possible while making the best use of planning and party utility to enable this. It can vary wildly.

There is also the fact that because shields cannot stack this prevents teams from having two sch or a noct ast and a sch, as this basically dooms your party to wipe in savage due to reduced effective healing. Whereas there's no tank combo that significantly reduces the survivability of the team anywhere near the degree of pairing healers incorrectly.

Balancing tanks is a completely different task to balancing healers. With tanks it's very much about what the individual class brings to the fight, with healers it's more about how both of them work together in the context of the content.

[Reiryuu]

I have little confidence in their balance changes and fully expect another huge eruption in May over them. For now, SE will not be getting any of my money unless I am pleasantly surprised in May. I have held off pre-ordering Shadowbringers and I'm very glad I did. Had there been a new healer annoucement in Dancer, I would have pre-ordered then and there hoping they would continue to work on the balance in 5.0. But... yeah. All of what Yoshida has said regarding healers has put my confidence levels and excitement levels for the expansion at 0. Not that they were very high after Stormblood either.

[Enla]

Part of me is glad they're breaking things in a bid to fix them. Because clearly the bandaids they've thrown at the classes up till this point haven't worked. However the other comments that have been made about how WHM needs to be made easier and how SCH is OP simply because of it's faerie just make me feel hesitant. Especially since SE is notorious for not taking player feedback into account - even though the needed changes have been splattering over the healer forums for years now. Change needed to happen but SE really does not have the best track record with reinventing classes with perhaps the sole exception of the current iteration of BRD. Though even that has detractors.

I'll give them a chance but I'm probably going to start seriously gearing my RDM and BRD on the side in preparation for the worst.

[Josco]

Hopefully they'll have a LOT of player feedback they will actually listen to before totally disassembling and reconstructing the healing jobs. My biggest fear is they'll release some half-baked idea, likely involving a flower gauge no on pays attention to, and when it doesn't work will wait until 6.0 to take another shot at balancing.

[Physic]

to be fair the whole we're adding a tank because we need more tanks so we can balance them followed by the we're not adding a healer because we need to balance them first before adding more left me scratching my head for a second.

I need to understand the reasoning from their point of view. what is so different between tanking and healing that for tanks they need more tanks to make things balanced while it works the opposite way for healers?

Maybe it was the wording... i dunno

it seems weird, but its really cause they are conceptualizing tanks as off tanks and main tanks now, so they want at least two options for each. They are not thinking about spliting healers into two subtypes, so they didnt need another. Also

[Istaro]

I have little confidence in their balance changes and fully expect another huge eruption in May over them. For now, SE will not be getting any of my money unless I am pleasantly surprised in May. I have held off pre-ordering Shadowbringers and I'm very glad I did. Had there been a new healer annoucement in Dancer, I would have pre-ordered then and there hoping they would continue to work on the balance in 5.0. But... yeah. All of what Yoshida has said regarding healers has put my confidence levels and excitement levels for the expansion at 0. Not that they were very high after Stormblood either.

Good for you!~

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NEXT!

[Reiryuu]

Hopefully they'll have a LOT of player feedback they will actually listen to before totally disassembling and reconstructing the healing jobs. My biggest fear is they'll release some half-baked idea, likely involving a flower gauge no on pays attention to, and when it doesn't work will wait until 6.0 to take another shot at balancing.

I... I really hate to burst your bubble... but they had over 350 pages of feedback about WHM changes in 4.0 and they listened to exactly none of it... so... yeah...

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NEXT!

Nice. How many more comments like these do you need to get that free set of steak knives you've always wanted?

[Belhi]

I'm more worried now that they're going to completely overhaul Healers.

I'm worried because SE doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to reworking jobs (Bowmage anyone?) and we all know they don't do player testing.

So we're essentially going to Beta test healers once ShB drops. Why am I confident in saying this?

Because when SB was shown, all the healers raised concerns about WHM Lilies and SCH MP costs and lack of AoE. Nothing changed and both were released and criticisms were shown to be right.

I am concerned but at the same time an overhaul is needed because as things are now they are never going to manage to balance healers. As uncertain as I am that they are up to it, at least this shows they acknowledge that the issue isn't one that can be solved by slapping on a few extra skills and tweaking some numbers. Changes need to be made to how healing works, not just the jobs themselves.

If anything this interview response is the first I have seen which gives me some hope we might not just be stuck in the same unbalancable rut we have been in since HW. It isn't a lot of hope but at least it is something.

[Barraind]

They painted themselves into a corner hard by not branching out to use any of the multitude of healing styles available and instead stuck to the 3rd healer being having the same styles of healing with a stance differentiation.

And then they cant balance A, B and AB, because they flat out ignore C through L.

And then wonder why people throw tomatoes when they say that out loud. Like holy shit, you say yourself you use other games for influence on mechanics, maybe look at other games for how healing mechanics work.

Theres games that can manage this many healing identities on three specs of one class.

[ChocoFeru]

Why are you taking job roles as "sides"?

"We, the healers" or "We, the tanks" evolving into "The tanks got a new job, and we didn't!"... what?

If you love healing, then you'll have 10 new levels with new skills and a combat system revamp, so the 3 existing healers will feel as new healers, just like the rest of jobs will feel new. If you played since 1.0 like me, you should know by now.


I don't get this new construct of "taking sides". In the end it only brings problems and fake entitlement.