Wedging healers into a pure healing role may have some advantages.

[Sebazy]

Wow. Just. Wow. I'm sensing quite a bit of projecting here.

Really though?

Have you actually looked back at the Job design team's track record since the launch of ARR?

Saying they are allergic to fun is harsh and unfair, I'll agree with that. However, they've consistently lacked innovation compared to the competition and the regressive design comment is highly justified.

Naming truly innovative healer specific abilities that aren't just moar HPS is genuinely pretty tricky. Why do they refuse to give us something to do that isn't merely throwing rocks in our downtime? Why do they consistently strip away healer niches time and time again?

Remember when healers (and SMN) would have organised virus chains to handle Tank busters that were literally a one shot even with tank cooldowns? Why did SE strip healers out of this and put it on the DPS?

Remember when SCH used to be expected to maintain and rotate a pair of (admittedly not that great) haste buffs kind of like FFXI bard songs? Why did this outright get removed?

Remember when we had a small selection of buffs to maintain? I'm not going to pretend that they were fantastic core gameplay elements, but why were they removed? Why didn't SE take that ball and run with it a bit. They've already done the groundwork in PvP and they will have a huge amount of data from this to look at and use as a baseline for PvE changes in a similar vein.

Honestly. This argument and many of the others on this board of late absolutely blow my mind with how incredibly short sighted they are.

I really don't know much clearer it can be. This across the board simplification of healers is NOT going to achieve what so many people here seem to think. We are going to be burst healing faster and harder than ever before (at least SCH and WHM will). Sudo and co can't fix this problem via encounter design. The MP economy of this game simply doesn't support sustained massive incoming damage (Note all the extended healer downtime throughout various top flight encounters. Godka's Trines are a great example of this). Going for a battle of attrition approach seems rather counter productive given WHM's 5.0 toolkit as well, it could happen, but it'll favour WHM in a way not seen since AST's failure in Gordias.

All this screeching about asking for more healing is just a waste of time.

What we need is more options with what we can do with our downtime (aka at least 50% of the time in encounters). Why don't we have a healer that almost entirely eschews personal DPS for buffs? (Or more specifically, why weren't SE courageous enough to push AST into this spot). Why don't we have more utility and synergy with other DPS jobs? Why don't SE take their gloriously unique job system and actually encourage players to make use of it? What's wrong with expecting me to be an AST for one fight, and then WHM to perform best for the next?

I'll tell you exactly why. It's because whilst the demands upon the job design team and expectations of the player base have only ever gone up. That job design team has never been expanded to help cope. Healers have drawn the short straw as a result, time and time again. This is why people like Knoahl are struggling to have any faith in Yoshida's team at this stage.

I hope that helps shed a bit of light on things.

[Knoahl]

snip.

Said a lot better than I could tbh, yes the allergic comment mainly came from my impatience at them, I just wish they'd have taken the time or a rep of some kind to reply to us all, but we already know that won't happen until live has been out.

[Brandedblade]

Snip.

Ok. So the Virus change is really the only thing in this entire post that felt painful to remember. I would love to have Virus back as much as the next person. My only guess is that they wanted to make damage mitigation a party wide responsibility as opposed to a niche thing only a few classes could do, and considering they also removed the STR/INT down attacks from pld, drk, and mnk as well. Although... I doubt sch needs it back at this point. Between all its shielding, sacred soil being buffed, and the fact it still has (a nerfed but still there) Fey Covenant effect tied to Fey Illumination. They made up for it.

While the Selene haste cycle was a cool element and idea, it was ultimately streamlined into Fey Wind, and nerfed in favor of giving Selene an AoE/Low Level Esuna option. My guess for its ultimate removal was the combination of button bloat, the fact the haste buff ultimately was a minor contribution outside of absolute min max scenarios, and a nerf to sch's party utility.

Quite frankly this whole mess is a two way street, you either have people like me who's looking at the changes and finding justifications for them. Or you have people like you and that other person crying foul and "double standards" or whatever because you think complexity is what makes a job's identity.

[Sebazy]

Quite frankly this whole mess is a two way street, you either have people like me who's looking at the changes and finding justifications for them. Or you have people like you and that other person crying foul and "double standards" or whatever because you think complexity is what makes a job's identity.

I haven't mentioned double standards or anything of the like once tyvm

Again, I really can't stress this enough. My opinions on this subject aren't based on complexity (Look back at my opinions on AST when 4.0 hit). I'm annoyed with SE because they have once again diluted healer gameplay whilst failing to offer the variety that is desired by both the hardcore and casual scenes.

[Brandedblade]

I haven't mentioned double standards or anything of the like once tyvm

Again, I really can't stress this enough. My opinions on this subject aren't based on complexity (Look back at my opinions on AST when 4.0 hit). I'm annoyed with SE because they have once again diluted healer gameplay whilst failing to offer the variety that is desired by both the hardcore and casual scenes.

I know you personally arent the one making that arguement. And this is where I find myself disagreeing. The variety is there still. WHM still has the strong nuke heals and excellent mp sustain. SCH still has the pets, ogcd heals, and even some mitigation cooldowns and a crit buff. And AST still has its Regen/Shield stance, still provides damage buffs for its group and still has damage mitigation (it's just not a card anymore).

The only thing remotely homogenized was the dps skills. And even then theres still some level of difference, WHM still has higher potency nukes and even got one that's intended to help mitigate their dps loss from gcd healing. SCH still has Ruin II and AoW to allow it to continue dpsing while throwing out its ogcd healing. And AST still has the 1.5 Malefic cast allowing for weaving its card mechanics between casts.

[Sebazy]

I think you're misunderstanding my point. I probably should have clarified it a bit better.

The healing kits are still pretty decent aside from some questionable holes in AST's kit.

Rather, it's the variety in the gameplay that's sorely lacking. With our oGCDs and cooldowns as they are now, we can either burst a party up to full inside of a couple of GCDs or pile on enough regeneration and mitigation to the point where we don't need to do anything else, and that's assuming a situation where damage is even coming anytime soon.

The downtime between these bursts is something that SE stubbornly refuses to address. It's like there's a really weird disconnect between Sudo's raid team and Sato's job team. I almost wonder if Sato thinks we still stand there spamming Cures between bursts of activity akin to what you'd see in Titan HM. This of course leaves Sudo trying to push the boundaries of what can be done within a scarily sharp framework of limitations, not only within the classes themselves, but even server performance shortfalls (Gordias says hi).

[Connor]

Couldn’t they just throw some buffs for us to use in role skills? Like Bravery/Faith/Haste/etc, then at least we have some GCD buffs to maintain on top of just spamming whatever filler spell. The Bravery spell already exists in Eureka so not like they’d have to do much work lol

I mean, DPS is always going to be the most important aspect of a fight, regardless of role. But at least letting healers contribute in a way that’s different from just normal DPS would make things a bit more interesting in my opinion.

This wouldn’t really address the real issue though. Honestly I’m thinking now the best hope is that next expansion healers will get more unique abilities to differentiate them from each other. Though that’s not exactly a great prospect for those hoping to play now lol

[ForteNightshade]

The downtime between these bursts is something that SE stubbornly refuses to address. It's like there's a really weird disconnect between Sudo's raid team and Sato's job team. I almost wonder if Sato thinks we still stand there spamming Cures between bursts of activity akin to what you'd see in Titan HM. This of course leaves Sudo trying to push the boundaries of what can be done within a scarily sharp framework of limitations, not only within the classes themselves, but even server performance shortfalls (Gordias says hi).

If I were to hazard a guess. I think part of the reason is they want to make healing as stress free as possible. While I get that mentality, it's caused a massive rift with the community since very few people like the idea of healers just standing around or very occasionally throwing out a DPS spell here or there. Meanwhile, the devs think deviating from this approach will scare away new healers. What I find ironic is instead of being stressed via healing; the job you signed up to play, you're instead told to DPS.

[Urthdigger]

This is why i am thinking making some healer specific mechanics would probably, at least partially, solve the problem. Shinryu Dragonhead is a good prototype of what can make healers busy healing, at least for non casual content

I actually think Shinryu is a poor example of this, because effectively all you're doing here is having an add that requires Cure as a DPS spell instead of Stone. Target the monster, press the button until the bar goes to the other side. Granted, that's not to say there haven't been good examples: The healer ghost in O5S is a decent example, where it applies a debuff to you that increases damage taken and proceeds to hit both you and itself for massive damage. You need to cleanse the debuff and the goal is then to survive the incoming damage until it kills itself. We could also have more fights like Nidhogg in the Aery where you have to keep an NPC alive, except actually make them take an appreciable amount of damage as well.

Really though, as people have posted since, the GCD healing kit is hardly more interesting than the upcoming Shadowbringers DPS kit. One of the problems with putting in things to make players heal more is it dumbs things down further: Ironically some of the easiest fights for me have been the ones with the most heavy unavoidable damage. You have no option but to just fire off your most potent heals, and the easiest choice to make is when there's no choice at all. If they want to make healers heal more, by all means do so, but it will require a retool of how healers function. Look at tanks and DPS, with their combos and procs and various systems that weave and synergize together. Healer does not have that. The only real "synergy" that we get is how effective healing gives us more time to DPS. Make the healing more complicated, and then raise the incoming unavoidable damage to support someone healing full time. Buuuuut I kinda doubt they'll do that.

[Rhais]

Why don't SE take their gloriously unique job system and actually encourage players to make use of it? What's wrong with expecting me to be an AST for one fight, and then WHM to perform best for the next?

This is a good question. I think going this route would be far more compelling then trying to make every job within the roles have nearly the same capabilities.