A serious suggestion in lieu of punishing all healers.

[Ilyrian]

Taking this to the extreme you could just remove WHM.
Balance nightmare over. Shields and HoTs for days. Give them both a fancy Wings cooldown - job done - ty ty.

[Yuyuka3]

Taking this to the extreme you could just remove WHM.
Balance nightmare over. Shields and HoTs for days. Give them both a fancy Wings cooldown - job done - ty ty.

AST is the copycat. If anything, it should go, plus WHM is one of the most iconic jobs in the franchise, they would be stupid to delete it. However, I think deleting any job at all won't do, they need to pull their heads out of their a**es and make them all unique, not just SCH and then WHM plus WHM with cards.

I actually like TCs idea quite a bit tbh.

[Ilyrian]

they need to pull their heads out of their a**es and make them all unique

In seriousness that's the exact opposite of what they can do.
In a party that can have max 2 healers - two are always going to be favored over the other.
And there are only so many ways to heal - direct healing, HoTs and shields. Shields are always superior to reactionary healing. That's just indisputable.
So they either have to assume that players who heal and participate in high-end content are going to be playing all three jobs or they have to make encounters that assume that shields will be used.
So, they need to either make WHM essential to extreme high damage scenarios that the other two healers couldn't keep up with OR we just resign ourselves to the fact that WHM is the RDM of healing, reliable for progress - subpar on farm.

[Cyrocco]

In seriousness that's the exact opposite of what they can do.
In a party that can have max 2 healers - two are always going to be favored over the other.
And there are only so many ways to heal - direct healing, HoTs and shields. Shields are always superior to reactionary healing. That's just indisputable.
So they either have to assume that players who heal and participate in high-end content are going to be playing all three jobs or they have to make encounters that assume that shields will be used.
So, they need to either make WHM essential to extreme high damage scenarios that the other two healers couldn't keep up with OR we just resign ourselves to the fact that WHM is the RDM of healing, reliable for progress - subpar on farm.

This reminds me of a good point that was brought up in one of my own forum posts a while back, and it really came to a consensus on how anything that is a unique way of recovering HP isn't an identity, and therefore, not relevant to the current balance issues.

It's much more important for each healer to have valuable tool kits for increasing party effectiveness in some unique way, rather than continue on with the Heal vs Shield vs HoT debate.

It would be much easier to balance the healers if they didn't have an extreme overlap in their healing power, and this is where I've agreed with Yuyuka in several threads at this point, Astrologian doesn't need shields, and the overlap here makes it much harder to make each role feel unique. White Mage only being a "pure" healer just means that everything in its kit can be found elsewhere, because everyone -needs- to be capable of healing through the content.

Give Scholar shields.

Give Astrologian rng buffs.

Give White Mage something.

[Crushnight]

we can go further

-Let shields stack
-Shields provide passive regen
-chain stratagem changed to increase base dmg instead of crit

Yep would be totally balanced now

[Ilenya]

-Let shields stack
-Shields provide passive regen

I get that the idea as a whole is a joke, but why can't there be a shield like this? It does a base heal, and a shield, but after a bit of time the shield is slowly drained as a regen effect. It wouldn't be a skill to use all the time, but would have some potential at times.

[Ilyrian]

This reminds me of a good point that was brought up in one of my own forum posts a while back, and it really came to a consensus on how anything that is a unique way of recovering HP isn't an identity, and therefore, not relevant to the current balance issues.

It's much more important for each healer to have valuable tool kits for increasing party effectiveness in some unique way, rather than continue on with the Heal vs Shield vs HoT debate.

It would be much easier to balance the healers if they didn't have an extreme overlap in their healing power, and this is where I've agreed with Yuyuka in several threads at this point, Astrologian doesn't need shields, and the overlap here makes it much harder to make each role feel unique. White Mage only being a "pure" healer just means that everything in its kit can be found elsewhere, because everyone -needs- to be capable of healing through the content.

Give Scholar shields.

Give Astrologian rng buffs.

Give White Mage something.

What though - Give WHM what?
Pretty sure SE would have done it by now if anyone whose actual job it is to sit down and do these things had thought of it.
We can't think of it, neither can they. Because there isn't a natural way to balance 3 healers when there are only two ways of healing outside of baseline and Shielding is the strongest and best way to do it.

So it will continue to be Scholar + 1 if they are the only Shielders. Then its WHM + Cards or WHM. And here we are.

Now introducing: White Schologian

I know you weren't being serious but you make an interesting point. Basically all 3 healers are currently WHM baseline - only 2 of them have added extras.

[Yuyuka3]

What though - Give WHM what?
Pretty sure SE would have done it by now if anyone whose actual job it is to sit down and do these things had thought of it.
We can't think of it, neither can they. Because there isn't a natural way to balance 3 healers when there are only two ways of healing outside of baseline and Shielding is the strongest and best way to do it.

So it will continue to be Scholar + 1 if they are the only Shielders. Then its WHM + Cards or WHM. And here we are.

There have been so many suggestions made in this forum over the years about what to possibly give WHM in terms of group support... Pick one. And please stop acting as if that's not true, because a quick forum search will show you it is. Most of those suggestions are also quite sensible and wouldn't hurt the other healers, either.

[Ilyrian]

There have been so many suggestions made in this forum over the years about what to possibly give WHM in terms of group support... Pick one. And please stop acting as if that's not true, because a quick forum search will show you it is. Most of those suggestions are also quite sensible and wouldn't hurt the other healers, either.

You pick one - seeing as it's your argument to prove.
Then we can discuss why it hasn't been implemented.

[Deceptus]

It would be much easier to balance the healers if they didn't have an extreme overlap in their healing power, and this is where I've agreed with Yuyuka in several threads at this point, Astrologian doesn't need shields, and the overlap here makes it much harder to make each role feel unique. White Mage only being a "pure" healer just means that everything in its kit can be found elsewhere, because everyone -needs- to be capable of healing through the content.

Honestly, SE's interpretation of AST is exactly what brought these balance issues up in the first place. The fact that they could do either, Shield or Regen, as well as buff virtually assured their spot in the raid.

Then the question is, which is weaker, WHM or SCH? The weaker of the two gets replaced. This design failure is 100% on SE and they have no real plan on how to fix it.