Ive no faith in SE/Yoshi-P when comes to balancing healers

[Fiorinol]

What I do not get in this thread is the amount of people stating that raid dps doesn't matter, when the first few weeks of a raid are entirely based on the premise of how much numbers you can put on the boss, especially the final floor's "door" fight.

I really wish people would stop with this mentality since so few groups can actually live up to it.

I don't agree. You would be surprised how many midcore groups I've run into that do not want WHM at all because they want more numbers on a 3rd party website. While most groups "aren't that good", they like to pretend they are, they're the ones perpetuating the meta.

Balancing around the idea that the entire game is only well-coordinated statics playing the hardest content in the game at the highest skill level is incredibly stupid. SCH and AST are amazing in that setting, sure, but most of the game and even most of Savage isn't played that way.

It's as stupid as White Mage not having any marginal personal DPS over Astrologian for most of the expansion. Then in 4.4 Astrologian outpaced White Mage by a mile due to multiple buffs. If you played White Mage in 4.4, you were handicapping yourself and your raid.

Even Samurai has had a marginal increase over other DPS jobs for a good part of the expansion.

The strengths of WHM lie elsewhere, specifically when it comes to being able to singlehandedly avert wipes and power through rough patches. It's like saying RDM and Verraise are worthless just because they aren't useful in farming or speedkills; that's all well and good but most groups aren't on the level of farming or speedkills and so RDM retains value.

If you have a group that doesn't need that extra safety net that's great and I'm happy for that. I've pugged a fair bit of this tier specifically and literally swapped off of AST because of this disparity I'm bringing up, only swapping back to it on o12 because Lightspeed is too good for Final to pass up. That's the point here - there is more to raiding than the setting where AST/SCH get to shine.

That's an interesting idea for strengths considering how many of the raid encounters will straight up wipe your party if you fail a mechanic. I'm surprised that you bring up pugging. Far more often than not, we wouldn't fail in pugs because we had or didn't have White Mage. It was often due to key players being incapable of doing mechanics, or doing DPS so low that what we did would not matter.

After 2 expansions of White Mage being in a weird place, it's strange to imply that WHM players are not disenfranchised. I have friends who stopped playing this game, because they would get nagged by their statics constantly to "play Ninja over Samurai", "play Summoner over Red Mage/Black Mage", and "play Astrologian over White Mage". Sure, you can window shop for another static, but that's time consuming and there are other games you can play. Running your own static is akin to running a kindergarten, it's a big responsibility and you sometimes run into all kinds of strange individuals. I can give plenty examples of weird stuff that's happened in my past groups.

And as much as I'm not a large fan of Hyomin, it's uncharitable to downplay their play. As far as I know, they're a very competent BRD player.

[Zolvolt]

I hope OP is never in control of class balance lmao.

[HyoMinPark]

I really wish people would stop with this mentality since so few groups can actually live up to it.

It’s not really a mentality—it’s a fact. If a piece of content doesn’t call for the amount of healing that WHM brings, it stops being a utility. Just like RDM’s Verraise (which I know you mentioned below—SMN actually has an easier time tossing out raises because RDM runs into MP issues if it Verraises too much, where as SMN has an extra tool to help with MP recovery).

Very little content requires the amount of raw healing that the developers boost as being WHM’s strong suit. Even Ultimate. When you start healing more than the content requires, you’re overhealing. Which is a waste of resources—MP, regen ticks, GCD; all of those.

I've said multiple times that there is no denying the lack of utility on WHM, the point is that groups have to choose between the recovery and healing potential on WHM and the dps bump they'll get from running an AST. For most groups this isn't as cut and dry as people try to make it out to be since most groups just aren't that good. That's the crux of the issue that I'm bringing up.

Both AST and SCH can also recover when things run south—this is not something that only WHM can do. Perhaps they may have to utilize less efficient tools compared to their oGCD tools (or burn some oGCDs on things like Lustrate over Energy Drain), but that doesn’t mean they can’t do it. When it comes to progression, you’re generally playing it fairly safe anyways regardless of what kind of group you’re in—so you will be casting a lot of GCD healing you otherwise wouldn’t be.

You’re making it almost sound like it’s impossible for an AST or a SCH to recover if crap starts to hit the fan, and I think that’s the issue I’m having when it comes to finding any sort of common ground with you. I just disagree with that statement.

Balancing around the idea that the entire game is only well-coordinated statics playing the hardest content in the game at the highest skill level is incredibly stupid. SCH and AST are amazing in that setting, sure, but most of the game and even most of Savage isn't played that way.

So, what should we balance against then? The lowest common denominator? That’s just as stupid. This game should not be balanced around what people can do in dungeons.

Balance should be done in the highest settings so that the true potential of each job is seen—and so they don’t end up overpowered because of things that were never considered when it came to testing. For example, keep in mind that BRD and MCH have constantly been balanced without any sort of synergy in mind—i.e., no raid buffs, including no piercing. What has happened every time? They end up far stronger than the developers thought they would be because of DRG—and, up until recently, have kicked casters out of the meta (MCH is actually still parse run meta, despite its clunkiness, because Hypercharge is inherently better than anything casters bring—but BLM/SMN have made it into speedkills because the devs finally allowed a selfish job [BLM] to be a selfish job).

The strengths of WHM lie elsewhere, specifically when it comes to being able to singlehandedly avert wipes and power through rough patches. It's like saying RDM and Verraise are worthless just because they aren't useful in farming or speedkills; that's all well and good but most groups aren't on the level of farming or speedkills and so RDM retains value.

Groups don’t spend forever progging/wiping to fights, though. No matter how “midcore” or “softcore” they may be. Once this “recovery” phase passes, WHM’s raw healing becomes nothing. Especially since AST can heal just as well as a WHM and provide damage buffs. Even if a group doesn’t know how to optimize the cards to the extent a speedkill group does, an AOE Balance in the opener is still more than what WHM can bring. Especially since AST pDPS is comparable to WHM’s.

You can’t base a premise solely on “progression” or “people suck at stuff”. Because that’s not always the case—it doesn’t always stay the case. Once you reliably start to clear a fight, that is considered farming. Which a lot of even midcore groups easily accomplish when it comes to the first two floors of Savage, and eventually to the others. Perhaps it’s just your wording, or perhaps it’s because I am tired, but you’re making it sound like groups that aren’t speedkill groups are permanently on the prog step of Savage.

My Deltascape and Sigmascape groups were fairly casual. Even they weren’t stuck on progression forever.

If you have a group that doesn't need that extra safety net that's great and I'm happy for that. I've pugged a fair bit of this tier specifically and literally swapped off of AST because of this disparity I'm bringing up, only swapping back to it on o12 because Lightspeed is too good for Final to pass up. That's the point here - there is more to raiding than the setting where AST/SCH get to shine.

My group during Alphascape was actually quite questionable for many reasons that I won’t go too deep into here. But we still did most of the fights with AST/SCH despite how much of a mess they could be. When our AST did go WHM, they were still a mess. Boosted recovery ability aside (especially o11s for some reason). I’ve also done both UCoB (up to Blackfire) with an AST or on AST, and I’ve never done UwU with a WHM yet (I’ve cleared it on BRD—if I had time I’d reprog on AST but focusing on reclears atm). AST doesn’t seem to have any problems in those fights either, and I don’t play with bleeding edge players. I play with good players, but not any that are this standard of “speedkill” that you keep talking about. I don’t even hold myself to that standard when I make my claims.

I just don’t think you can’t hinge a job’s relevance or ability on the premise of “permanent progression” or “people suck” — especially when the other two can handle the same situations even with making damage sacrifices (which, WHM may have decent MP, but when a group is as bad as needing you to blatantly overheal, Thin Air and Lucid can only do so much—even WHM runs dry eventually).

[Starflake]

Looking at the leaks for SCH, I see their only aoe is a 150 potency skill that's spammable. They deleted Shadow Flare and Bane, so this is essentially the only skill SCH will have. Unless of course we find out tomorrow that SCH has some other way of throwing some AoE on there. I wouldn't bank on it though. Are they really going to gimp SCH aoe wise again like they did at the start of Stormblood?

[Ariane]

Looking at the leaks for SCH, I see their only aoe is a 150 potency skill that's spammable. They deleted Shadow Flare and Bane, so this is essentially the only skill SCH will have. Unless of course we find out tomorrow that SCH has some other way of throwing some AoE on there. I wouldn't bank on it though. Are they really going to gimp SCH aoe wise again like they did at the start of Stormblood?

I think its intentional. Leaks also say healers get reduced to one AoE, one dot and one single target direct spell. Aero III is gone, assize does no damage. Only difference is SCH still has ruin ii, and WHM gets that blood lily thing.

[Jollyy5]

Yeah, seems like really sad times ahead for all healers worth their salt.

Unless healing requirements increase dramatically, healing is going to become beyond boring and I might just drop it altogether.

[HyperiusUltima]

Yeah, seems like really sad times ahead for all healers worth their salt.

Unless healing requirements increase dramatically, healing is going to become beyond boring and I might just drop it altogether.

I’d hold your beer on that one buddy. It’s like this every damn expansion where the worries are there; but with a rework of this scale we need to consider how they’re changing their algorithm because they’re changing how MP is managed, how MP Ticks with Piety affect your 3s income, and how Healers interact with the Charge System(if they have any charges at all).

[Vivian_Vex]

Yeah, seems like really sad times ahead for all healers worth their salt.

Unless healing requirements increase dramatically, healing is going to become beyond boring and I might just drop it altogether.

My god this forum is filled with so many of you people who go on and on about how healers are going to become boring when you have seen so little and have experienced none of the content. I got an idea. How about you actually wait to play it before saying it's going to be boring? Is that a thing that you are capable of? Or do people like you just want to complain nonstop about something they know little about?

[Deceptus]

My god this forum is filled with so many of you people who go on and on about how healers are going to become boring when you have seen so little and have experienced none of the content. I got an idea. How about you actually wait to play it before saying it's going to be boring? Is that a thing that you are capable of? Or do people like you just want to complain nonstop about something they know little about?

If the leaks are true, SCH specifically has a single dot and a single damage spell. No bane, No Energy Drain.

How are they supposed to quest like that? How is that fun? I don't want to feel like I'm level 6 again. Because that's exactly what this will feel like.

[Vivian_Vex]

If the leaks are true, SCH specifically has a single dot and a single damage spell. No bane, No Energy Drain.

How are they supposed to quest like that? How is that fun? I don't want to feel like I'm level 6 again. Because that's exactly what this will feel like.

*If the leaks are true*

This is exactly what I was talking about. Everyone just needs to calm down and wait until we actually see what happens in game. because I'm sure everyone is still going to be able to quest and do all that stuff.