After this is all over, can we never claim "WHM is fine"?

[ColaSama]

Feel like trashy cop out excuses to the current situation, and makes it sound as though we should find the current state of healing acceptable because it's WHM's "time to shine."

If that's the balancing attitude we want to take we'll be forever in a cycle of classes being shat upon for the benefit of the others. That's not something I want to see happen, and I feel as though we should be requesting and expecting more if we ever want to see some form of progress.

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but, as seen in every MMO ever (and other games), devs have a hard time balancing classes/characters. I have seen people say the same things as you did, about it being "an eternal cycle of classes being shat upon for the benefits of others"... but the sad truth is that it's common. I have seen it on WoW's forums since vanilla, every single expansion, every single day a new post saying "come on, do not make 1 class OP and then an other one so everyone has his time to shine".

https://9gag.com/gag/ayLr86y/how-dif...ce-their-games

This "balancing attitude" is here since eons. It's a meme at this point. I lost hope in balancing teams many years ago.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

2.0 demonstrated that SE's job design team are capable of doing this. I've assume the fall from grace is a case of them just not having the time or resources to keep up the standard of their earlier work.

I'm almost convinced that 2.0 only went so well because there was barely any choice in the matter. You had 2 tanks, 2 healers so it just worked.

[Trunks]

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but, as seen in every MMO ever (and other games), devs have a hard time balancing classes/characters. I have seen people say the same things as you did, about it being "an eternal cycle of classes being shat upon for the benefits of others"... but the sad truth is that it's common. I have seen it on WoW's forums since vanilla, every single expansion, every single day a new post saying "come on, do not make 1 class OP and then an other one so everyone has his time to shine".

https://9gag.com/gag/ayLr86y/how-dif...ce-their-games

This "balancing attitude" is here since eons. It's a meme at this point. I lost hope in balancing teams many years ago.

Eh. FFXIV is still generally the best-balanced MMO I've ever played. Even through SB when WHM was relatively trash, it was still used - it had its niche, and was viable otherwise. And on the DPS side they really do a pretty good job. There will always be a "meta comp" that's mathematically the best. But players are people and it's often a DPS gain to bring someone who's actually having fun. Most balancing issues in other MMOs tend to come from sprawling class systems via talent trees and other "progression paths". At their most extreme in XIV, relative imbalances are nowhere near what I've seen regularly in other games, where DPS classes fall behind by 10 and 20 percent for months and years.

[Saefinn]

This balance your looking for doesn’t exist in this landscape if u have 3 classes and u can only field 2 one will always preform worse than others it’s the nature of the beast , it’s the predictable pattern, Trust me I’m a tank main PLD since launch I want the healers happy but this isnt new nor is it goin away. Look at PLD when Drk came out nobody wanted PLD , look at Nin now ppl are takin DNC instead, look at how War hasn’t been left out of raid group comp forever now, look at how AST/sch have dominated the past 2 yrs. There’s a pattern here I’m not condoning it but merely recognizing it. Square rotates whos time to shine it is. At the end of the day if your good enough with a gimped class it won’t matter much everything will be ok, but you can’t turn a blind eye to the fact balance is a illusion, there is no such thing as equal here.

There's a farcry between the attitude you put across and the impossibility of 'true' balance. "This is the price you pay for being top healers". The healer issues don't boil down to that impossibility. Otherwise I'd be complaining that my DNC is the lowest ranged physical DPS AFTER contributions are taken into account. But the difference doesn't gimp them and despite the 3 jobs playing very differently to each other, they've kept them at a level where the disparity only matters to top percentile meta groups.


When it comes to healing, I've yet to see complaints about who is meta yet. The gap as I understand it is an issue for AST specifically because their healing potential is weaker, so is their DPS and cards are pretty gimp compared to what they used to be. So in this instance, AST is in a bad place because there's much less of an advantage in having one. (or at least is one aspect where they're in a bad place)

But this is only one part of the issues that SCH and AST are for some reason are "paying the price" for. The issues are at the core of how healing works in this game, how the healers play. What SE did was break the other healers rather than fix WHM. WHM still has issues, they've not been resolved, they've just got shadowed by the AST and SCH now joining in the well hoping for Lassy to show up.

Speaking as a Scholar, I get bored. That's my biggest issue, I heal too well. Dungeons feel like Sastasha to me, because I'm using 1 heal ability and 1 or 2 DPS abilities. And I can fit in 10 or more DPS moves before I need to cast 1 or 2 healing spells. I know on content that'll be different, but I am told SCH doesn't feel that different to me playing at 70 than it does at 80 and that's putting me off from taking it all the way because I am bored at 70.

[Risvertasashi]

Even through SB when WHM was relatively trash, it was still used - it had its niche, and was viable otherwise.

oh gods, here we go again...

[kidalutz]

And now we see why there wasnt a fourth healer implemented. Everyone complains thier healer fave is trash but nobody has figured a way to make the three healers we have equally appealing and fun to play.. Just saying put those headmeats together and figure out what would do this without making one more desirable than the other. then once thats done compile the data and hand it over to SE

[Risvertasashi]

Just saying put those headmeats together and figure out what would do this without making one more desirable than the other. then once thats done compile the data and hand it over to SE

Bam.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I do want to comment that we shouldn't be saying stuff like "It's ASTS time to suck". We should be looking to get everyone in line now.
Honestly, now that WHM has some semblance of utility in it's high dps, if they can just get ASTs Rdps and lack of healing in check we'd be fine.
At this moment, there's a real chance to get healers balanced. Now watch SE do something stupid like buff up AST to do WHM level personal dps.

[kidalutz]

Bam.

oh yes I know the flowchart.. now MAKE THEM ALL INTERESTING TO PLAY.

[Risvertasashi]

oh yes I know the flowchart.. now MAKE THEM ALL INTERESTING TO PLAY.

the problem with "interesting to play" is it's very subjective. And a lot of the suggestions on these forums since shb launch have been power increases where they probably aren't needed, so "interesting to play" and "balanced" do seem to be rather at odds with each other. If you can even get people to agree on what "interesting to play" means.