I've said it many times but I think I need to say it again.

[Sebazy]

Dear SE/Yoshida/Whichever rep bothers to read this.

You quite literally have no idea what you are doing with healers, or how they are played at a high level.

This was painfully evident with 4.0 and it's looking like 5.0 is going to be repeat of the same.

I cannot stress the following enough:

You desperately need to expand the job design team with a couple of individuals who have some enthusiasm, motivation and high level experience with the healer role.

The changes shown in the media build are simply not good enough.

Some quick notes and observations:

WHM's 5.0 upgrade consists of the things it should have gotten with 4.0. The PI change makes me think that SE still don't understand WHM's clipping woes and Misery isn't going to line up nicely. It's a good job SE saw fit to give them some party utility.... oh wait. They do have an advantage in raw dps potency across the board now, but I'm not particularly hopeful that it'll outweigh AST's cast time advantages.

As for SCH? I wonder how many SCHs at the very highest end of play are looking at these changes in disbelief. Critlo on a button is going to be interesting. Seraph looks pretty solid and I'm quietly hoping that fairy potency will work of your own stats thus scaling a little better. But that's literally all I've got. Outside of that, the job's skill ceiling just crashed hard. Fairy micromanagement is gone as is their DPS play. Enjoy your new expansion peoples, be grateful SE at least remembered to give you a spammable AoE this time round.

AST did relatively alright with CU being the most significant nerf that I can see. The new cards will offer a little less burst in exchange for a lot more consistency but at the expense of being able to use cards and CDs for MP. It's important to note that this could be an issue on par with WHM's MP starvation circa 3.4 or it could be a non issue. Redraw, Sleeve Draw and Minor Arcana are massive improvements and whilst personally I'm not a fan of the new draw/play mechanic, it'll be a positive change once hotkeys are jiggled a little bit. It's also noteworthy that AST still retain their cast time advantage with Malefic.

Tentative thumbs up for AST. WHM is still stuck firmly in the past. SCH's are getting flashbacks of 4.0.

[Whichi]

I copy and pasted your forum post because its very true and square enix has no idea whats going on these healer changes are unbelievably bad this doesnt fix healer problems at all. You might as well have just buffed healers damage potencys or healing potencys and you would have the exact same thing happen. Unbelievable how terrible and disappointing this is.

[Jxnibbles]

Kill 5.0 Healers so we can get a new Healer in 6.0.. Well at least Healers get unique mounts.

[Commander_Justitia]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever. Then it turned out to be not as bad once they played it.....
You are creating feedback/facts basically to something that isn't released yet, to skill information that are tentative - its highly speculative...
Then the clickbait title lmao, I feel like if anybody could please your own expectations - 95% of the community would hate it again

[Deceptus]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever. Then it turned out to be not as bad once they played it.....
You are creating feedback/facts basically to something that isn't released yet, to skill information that are tentative - its highly speculative...

There's nothing speculative about healers aoe moves being removed, and their damage kit consisting of nothing more than 1 dot, and one filler spell.

[Sanghelios]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever. Then it turned out to be not as bad once they played it.....
You are creating feedback/facts basically to something that isn't released yet, to skill information that are tentative - its highly speculative...
Then the clickbait title lmao, I feel like if anybody could please your own expectations - 95% of the community would hate it again

In all honesty, WHM was utterly shit at the release of SB and was only fixed to an degree through the whole of the expansion.

[fantasticm]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever. Then it turned out to be not as bad once they played it.....

WHM has been The Undesirable for over two years. We've also been through two expansions now. People are right to be concerned considering SE rarely makes major changes (if any) during the pre-release window.

[HyoMinPark]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever. Then it turned out to be not as bad once they played it.....
You are creating feedback/facts basically to something that isn't released yet, to skill information that are tentative - its highly speculative...
Then the clickbait title lmao, I feel like if anybody could please your own expectations - 95% of the community would hate it again

Are you trying to imply that the Lily System was good? Because that was the largest complaint healers had by far about WHM (minus its continued lack of raid utility). We are now in Patch 4.58, and the Lily System still sucks. And WHM is still inferior to AST.

WHM versus AST in 5.0 all hinges on whether or not AST's utility can out-do WHM's personal damage. If AST's utility still beats WHM, AST will still be desired over it. If WHM's personal damage beats AST, then it will probably kill AST. But we can't know that yet until we get our hands on some numbers.

[Sebazy]

Remember the outrage about 4.0 WHM, people called it dead class and whatever.

Look back through my post history around 4.0's press preview:

I firmly disagreed with the whole Woe is WHM movement back then and was strongly of the opinion that WHM was actually in a comparatively ok spot. However I was also very much of the mind that SCH was going to face some serious issues at all levels of content upon 4.0's release if the media build wasn't changed further. I'd say I was 2 for 2 on those predictions. The main clangers I made were suggesting preview PI might be useful (We never got a fight that used it) and that Earthly Star's potency would get nerfed (It never did, to be fair, it's pretty game changing as a result).

I actually think these changes aren't quite as harsh as the 4.0 ones were for SCH. But you're kidding yourself or you simply don't understand the job if you don't appreciate the impact they will have on it.

WHM will be in the same spot it's been in for a while now. fine and nothing more.

AST is harder to gauge. If the loss of self sustain hurts it, it could actually end up in quite a bad spot. This and the confusion over Divinity are the only real unknowns at this point.

And yeah, sorry for the clickbait title, I didn't want to make it too long =(

[EaMett]

I was going to and still plan on making my own thread about this as well. I really want them to notice this shit so I'm willing to just add to the pile of unhappy threads. This is ridiculous.

I feel like the only healer coming out ok from this is AST and even then that's only because I'm willing to overlook the card changes since I have a hard time visualizing how they play. But considering they want to downplay utility I'm kinda giving it a pass until I get my hands on it.

But WHM and SCH changes are just a sign that they don't play or don't know how to play these classes.

Edit: I'm going to add that I feel a few of these changes don't have to do with actual gameplay but getting their stupid trust system to actually work on all healers (looking at you sch especially). Way to go designing classes around an AI and not actual gameplay 10/10 stupid move.