Have we given up on SCH?

[Schan]

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

[Lodi]

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

For the record...

SCH:
-Merging of two dots
-Removal of unique dot spreader (Bane)
-Replacement of unique aoe dot by generic aoe (Miasma II > Art of War)
-Removal of Fairy!Largesse (Rouse)
-Removal of MP management/aetherflow spender tool (Energy drain)
-Removal of one of the two pets and all its attached abilities

AST:
-Removal of unique buff extenders (Time Dilation & Celestial Opposition)
-Removal of card management tools (Spread & Royal Road)
-Replacement of 26 possible card uses with 1
-Button bloat (Draw turned to Draw & Play, Undraw has litterally no use)
-Disappointing numbers (the healer that requires the most work, and yet is the weakest class in the entire game)

WHM:
-Removal of aoe damage & dot (Aero III)
-Useless skill made even more useless (Fluid Aura)
-Job gauge whose only purpose is to ignore the newly implemented charge system
-Addition of two new skills that are just free and instant cast versions of existing skills (Afflatus Solace & Rapture)
-Continued the tradition of taking a WHM skill and giving it to every healer (Repose)

General:
-Removal of three defensive abilities (Eye for an Eye, Largesse, and Protect.)

And what did we get again...?
Ah yes, a hundredth upgrade to our main spells, identical dots for each class and standardized aoes, so offensive gameplay across all healers is exactly the same now.
Oh, and we got maybe one or two interesting OGCDs.


Yes, I am jaded. My excitement pretty much died when I saw these changes, went back up when playing the story, then died again as soon as I remembered how boring the role has become.
And each passing Live Letter without a single word on healers only comforts me in my decision to stop playing this cursed role.

I wanted to have fun while healing, but apparently SE thinks healing should be as easy and mind-numbing as possible. So be it then, I'll go play something else.

[Saefinn]

Snip

And that's just the changes from SB to ShB. I still miss the days when SCH had 3 single target DoT's, their DPS moves had status effects on them and we had better handicaps to better differentiate how healers felt to play and WHM being the healiest healer actually meant something. And I even miss stance dancing with Cleric Stance.

Only thing we've got back is Energy Drain.

[QooEr]

And what did we get again...?
Ah yes, a hundredth upgrade to our main spells, identical dots for each class and standardized aoes

dont forget AST's "upgrades" to malefic and combust are what they used to be at lv 70 in SB cuz they decided to retroactively nerf all of asts dps since lv 1 for absolutely no reason.

also the new standarized aoes were also a huge nerf for holy and gravity, because apparently not taking forever in dungeons is a bad thing

[Deceptus]

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

[Gemina]

I became jaded when my DPS rotation boiled down to one dot and one filler spell from lvl 4 to lvl 80. That's boring AF.

It's one of the main reasons I hardly ever play AST. I know other AST's and they wouldn't wish their pre ShB dps rotation on anyone.

It's beyond clear after 6 years that the Developers either:

A) Have no idea what to do with healers / balance them properly.

B) Don't care to balance them properly.

Either option is equally bad.

And then people wonder why no one plays healers and there are is an extreme healer shortage in endgame content.

I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been. People just seem quick to think otherwise because they're bored, salty, w/e. Did the devs homogenize them in order to accomplish this balance? Yeah, they did, and I feel it was necessary because what they were working with was a total mess of six years fiddling around with healers instead of actually dissecting what was wrong with them. What was crystal clear to me, was healers like SCH were very far from their vision of the role, while WHM was closer to it.

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do. In this sense, I can totally understand why healers are frustrated. But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

This does not mean I think healing is just fine, because it's not. The main point however is a lack of DPS skills is hardly the cause of the problems we have and more like a symptom of poor encounter design. To just give healers more DPS skills is to sweep the problem right under the rug and head right back to where we were before ShB, and that's not going to happen.

[Deceptus]

I don't think it's either because healers are more balanced now than they've ever been..

Balance doesn't equal fun. Right now healers are boring.

The issue is encounter design gives healers a ton of downtime. The conundrum is the devs don't want to fill this time by giving healers a more complex DPS arsenal, or a true rotation, but they also don't want to change up encounter design to give them more to do.

This is exactly right. The stated developer vision is to make healers more healing focused but they're not willing to change the battle design to meet that vision. IMHO, that goes back to developer competency. You can't say you want to do something and completely fail to do it. Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.

But when your answer to the problem is, "Give me more DPS skills", or if healers want to continue to focus on their DPS "rotation" as the elephant in the room, I can say with a lot of confidence that your focus differs from where the dev team is placing theirs, and your continued disappointment is imminent.

Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

[Gemina]

Not partially fail, they have completely failed their stated vision.

Healers today are doing almost exactly the same amount of GCD's healing as they did before, just now their dps rotation is boring. If SE doesn't make healers buffers / debuffers their only other option during downtime is to do damage.



Personally I think they need to shift healer downtime from dpsing to buffing / debuffing.

I wouldn't say completely failed. I am much more inclined to say that they are working on it, but in order to get healing where it needs to be, homogenization of our healers was necessary. Wipe the slate clean so to speak to have fresh ground to work on. It is still early into the expansion and if anyone thought they would get healing right out of the gate or even by 5.1 might be new to the game, or otherwise unaware of how things have worked in FFXIV historically.

Two months in now, the dev team should have solid data from not only savage, but content outside of it to start making some decisions. Player feedback is important as well, and they do take it in when it is constructive and not whiny rants filled with 'I' statements. I just think we really need to stop demonizing the dev team as far as healing goes. They are not sitting in recliners, smoking cigars laughing at the misery. They want to get it right to where it fits their vision and is also fun and engaging for players. It is just really difficult because of the way encounters have been designed since early 2.0.

[Saefinn]

Snip

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0. I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players. Arguably they could still do this with a tiered system, it works for casters, RDM is easy (and still fun, it was my main DPS in SB and I am getting it to 80 at the moment), BLM has more to manage and less mobility and SMN has a more complicated rotation newbies might find harder to understand.

The thing is, they already have a great foundation for making healers fun and arguably don't need a clean slate or to homogenise them. One of the main issues here is that their main balance philosophy is to patch weaknesses instead of making strengths worthwhile over said weaknesses. It's why 2.0 SCH and WHM worked together. As soon as they patched SCH's weakness, SCH became OP and also made WHM's identity as "the healiest heal" redundant (an identity they've continued to give WHM since without giving them something else). To make it less OP, they've weakened what made it fun and strong, instead of giving it its weakness back. And then they based AST's design over this relationship and to be able to swap beween heal styles, which they inadvertently made redundant by patching SCH's weakness. So it put WHM in a bad place back then, but WHM, SCH and AST were still fun to play (though I didn't like being OP). Though understandably this was the first of issues where WHM seemingly started to be loved less by the devs.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

I think if they went as far as to communicate that they're at least aware of the problem and are working on it, they'd have a bit more faith from people in the healer communities, something they've done with other roles. At the moment the extent of acknowledgement is that "no" they won't change AST's card and they'll update SCH's tooltips.
This was why my question for one of the "asks" was over better communication, I wasn't rude to them because I know overall the dev team does a fantastic job (and I expressed that), which is why it's even more frustrating healers feel so bad. I've changed jobs to enjoy the content.

[Gemina]

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0.

Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes", then you're going to be waiting a long time. When I speak of historic in terms of SE, I'm talking about how some jobs are horrendous when a new expansion is released, but SE will take in player feedback and make changes within reason. This expansion has already seen SCH getting Energy Drain back, Hagakure was returned to SAM, healing potencies were fixed for AST, damage potencies adjusted for NIN, among others. These 'less than meaningful' changes have improved these four jobs greatly.

I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. It doesn't mean we should be content with it, but goal post moving at the very least means that the issue is still being addressed and worked on, instead of being complacent. It's better that the goal posts move, than stay in the same position. This is true even for jobs that players are happy with. Just because something is good, doesn't mean it can't be improved; and just because something is 'bad', doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players.

This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

There was next to nothing wrong with WHM until AST was implemented into the game. The over-tuning of AST to make it viable and kick WHM right out of the meta was probably the biggest indicator of the devs not knowing what they were doing when it came to healers. We can keep revisiting this for the sake of having something to talk about, or we can move forward to the here and now. The devs nuked SoTL2, got rid of CD reduction that was the previous lily system, and made WHM better. By all accounts, I would say they listened. However, if players were saying, "Please don't take away SCH DPS skills!" Then they most certainly did not. SCH as far as being able to meet healing requirements while keeping up steady damage really has not changed (this is how the devs see things). You just have less buttons to push to accomplish this now (this is how players see things).

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. It's a daunting task to create something from your vision and shape it in a way that is marketable. Now even though nothing gets ignored, not everything gets heard. That is something to really take in. The dev team is not obligated to share information. What is actually communicated between a developer and consumer is serious business. That seriously needs to be understood. If you were to actually know what we hear in comparison to what is going on over there, you would likely be blown away.

Patience.