Has anyone quit healing?

[Deceptus]

"I hate RNG because it is frustrating."

Unpredictability is about the worst way you can possibly design both Tanks and Healers. And AST was designed with it as it's core job mechanic. They need stability, because routine random spike damage is stressful and frustrating for both.

A small amount of RNG is fine. Your Cure 1 can proc a free Cure 2. Great. Felt rewarding in low level play when MP resources actually mattered.

A combination of 6 Boles / Ewers / Spires on the old card system? Yeah, no.

[QooEr]

just because RNG is involved in a mechanic doesnt mean it has to be completely unreliable all the time. several games tweak their RNG for this purpose; an example is tetris where the tetrominoes arent each generated randomly but instead they generate randomly ordered sequences of all tetrominoes, to ensure the player doesnt spend too long without a desired piece.

AST cards couldve went a similar direction, cycling through all 6 cards every 6 draws/redraws AND adding the 3 redraw charges to the old system wouldve been more than enough to both warrant an aoe balance every time celestial opposition came up and also letting you to get some other card you might've wanted.

i also think that rather than making all the cards the Exact Same Thing they shouldve made the other cards more desirable, either by adjusting potencies or giving cards more uses:

- For potencies the balance itself was incredibly broken and they shouldve tweaked the values so that the balance gave more or less the same dps gain in average as the spear and the arrow (and if they made spire give DH instead of TP, that too.)

- As for other uses to the less desirable cards in the old iteration of AST, Perhaps they couldve given an action that lets you play a card without using your royal road so you could save that for the balance. Perhaps you could have more than 1 card in your spread to actually be able to rely on the bole for specific parts of fights (at least during prog). perhaps they could let you stack royal road effects so youll actually want to see other cards before getting to the balance. perhaps something else entirely!

the solution of just making everything the same was extremely boring both lore wise and gameplay wise (and also inaccessible for controller players. not everyone has the motor skills to scroll up the party list 4 times in the 1.5 second cast of malefic so you dont clip the gcd with the play action)

[Saefinn]

Unpredictability is about the worst way you can possibly design both Tanks and Healers. And AST was designed with it as it's core job mechanic. They need stability, because routine random spike damage is stressful and frustrating for both.

A small amount of RNG is fine. Your Cure 1 can proc a free Cure 2. Great. Felt rewarding in low level play when MP resources actually mattered.

A combination of 6 Boles / Ewers / Spires on the old card system? Yeah, no.

By all means I can see an argument to tweak the RNG but not abolish it. Actually, my swearing taking a newbie through The Burn yesterday I think illustrates what you mean here. I got the Spear, I already had its seal, then The Ewer, then The Spear, The Ewer and nothing else, whilst still useful. It'd be a good improvement even if they adjusted Redraw to not repeat cards.

[Mortex]

Well to be fair arrow on specific dps jobs whas a stronger dmg increase then balance whas. Just a lot of other job would have problems with the rotation too get everything in a specific buff window

[Gravagar]

...
the solution of just making everything the same was extremely boring both lore wise and gameplay wise (and also inaccessible for controller players. not everyone has the motor skills to scroll up the party list 4 times in the 1.5 second cast of malefic so you dont clip the gcd with the play action)

Really feels like making the RNG mechanic of the RNG job fun was not high on their priority list. I like your ideas for fixing the system- nobody's really happy with all the homogenization, whether it's the jobs or the cards. I liked the synergy aspects of how some jobs liked crit or speed more than others, and would've rather seen the devs double down on those aspects, to the point where every comp has some quality synergy, instead of deleting them... Like adding a job trait to someone that makes them want to be a DH powerhouse, to go along with DH spires.

[Jallun]

Really feels like making the RNG mechanic of the RNG job fun was not high on their priority list. I like your ideas for fixing the system- nobody's really happy with all the homogenization, whether it's the jobs or the cards. I liked the synergy aspects of how some jobs liked crit or speed more than others, and would've rather seen the devs double down on those aspects, to the point where every comp has some quality synergy, instead of deleting them... Like adding a job trait to someone that makes them want to be a DH powerhouse, to go along with DH spires.

And that RNG can really cause hassle in delaying buff windows so a maximized Divination can align with them. We had quite enough problems before all cards became the same thanks to RNG; this just really made it worse while roughly keeping the same RNG rate overall.

[ItMe]

Yes OP.
I've effectively quit healing.
I'm relatively new to MMOs and this was my first time trying healing, but ...
Everyone is so bad.
Sure, to some extent we're all learning together and they're struggling too, but it's so hard when you're learning what to do and people are just standing in AoEs. I just can't get the hang of it. I swear I've wipe in at least 40% of the dungeons I heal.

[currentlemon]

I just came back to the game after a five month hiatus. Just finished Shadowbringers story, but I have no intention of leveling any healers even though my WHM is level 70.
I'm not going to be touching healers for a while until SE gets their act together and starts listening to the healer community. It's a long shot, I know; but given the player's discontent with healers in general (even the Japanese players are unhappy based on what I've heard) there is a small spark of hope. At least for the next expansion. For now, I'll stick to tanking and DPS. BLM, MNK, and GNB here I come.

I want to play WHM again, but it just isn't appealing. We need something new. Something that can revitalize the healer community. But who knows what's going to happen. The 5.3 live letter is coming in two weeks. We can only pray that Yoshi-P and the devs have something planned (again long shot).

[Rilifane]

I don't have trouble with the prepull stuff or opener in general but the fact that Sleeve can give you the same card three times makes me want to jump off the platform, escpecially during opener or 6min reopener.
If they tweaked it a little so Sleeve can't troll you as hard and make it always give you three different cards, I'd be much happier. There is still some RNG but it can't screw you completely.
It doesn't happen often but when it does, I want to smash something...

[Gravagar]

I don't have trouble with the prepull stuff or opener in general but the fact that Sleeve can give you the same card three times makes me want to jump off the platform, escpecially during opener or 6min reopener.
If they tweaked it a little so Sleeve can't troll you as hard and make it always give you three different cards, I'd be much happier. There is still some RNG but it can't screw you completely.
It doesn't happen often but when it does, I want to smash something...

I'm still baffled. On launch, they shipped Sleeve Draw in the state where, not only can you draw the same card 3 times in a row, but you had to hit Draw before your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arrows in a row. I know it's a bit unfair to give 'em flak for issues they've addressed, but I also think it's unfair to say "they're doing their best" when there are so, so many issues that still need to be addressed one year later that we're getting radio silence on.



Is it too much to ask to have our new AST abilities playtested thoroughly first, by people who enjoy and understand the job, so that we don't have these incredibly frustrating and obvious issues in the first place?