Healer Unhappiness exists on the Jap Healing Forums as well.

[Semirhage]

I'm going to blow your mind with this one.

It's okay to clip.

It's okay to not reach the platonic ideal peak of perfection, what a revelation.

Or, perhaps, maybe being ultra clippy in the first place is evidence that a job's design doesn't flow very well and...*gasp* could be improved!

[Semirhage]

I would have loved WHM to retain Protect and Stoneskin as a permanent raid buff and have it be unique to WHM. Less damage taken means less heal to do and more dps by proxy. That would be balanced against the offensive Utility the other two bring. They would have to heal more but also have less dps opportunities.

Not a ding against this idea, but I'm finding myself amusingly drawn back to the olden days of ARR and Heavensward.

When the job balancing team decided that WHM having exclusive access to the magic defense half of protect or (heavens to betsy) a whole extra 8% shield on stoneskin would be "too powerful" and "might make WHM mandatory for raids"

*cackles in SCH getting Indom and being effectively mandatory the very same expansion*
*guffaws at The Blackest Night not only being HP percentage based, but far more useful, powerful, and kit integrated than Stoneskin ever was*

Where was I? Oh yeah, I didn't have a point to make. Just poking fun at healer design over the years.

[Veis_Alveare]

I'm going to blow your mind with this one.

It's okay to clip.

If you ignore potential clipping it only makes playing WHM more boring since it's removing one of the few more challenging parts of it's gameplay.

[GrimGale]

Trying to balance offensive utility with defensive utility doesn't work in a game that's all about offense. You only need enough HP to live, everything beyond that is superfluous. Even if WHM could heal/mitigate better if it isn't able to bring the numbers of SCH and AST it will still be the bad healer.

It's also ironic that a SCH (which has a "now raid does more damage" button) wouldn't want to see it on other jobs.

How is that ironic.

To clarify, I don't like how Chain Stratagem works, personally. I'd rather have to build up to it with a proper job gauge, than simply press a button. How Chain Stratagem works right now makes it bland and unsatisfying. But I still think SCH should be the unique healer to have to manage debuffs on enemies as its own identity.

Just like AST should be the unique healer to manage buffs on allies as its idenitity.

None of that means WHM should be the baby healer. None of that means WHM should be weakest or the simplest. I think WHM should have its own identity as a powerful nuker. Reliant on strong personal dps and a satisfying rotation that allows it to weave damage and healing together.

[glamazon]

None of that means WHM should be the baby healer. None of that means WHM should be weakest or the simplest. I think WHM should have its own identity as a powerful nuker. Reliant on strong personal dps and a satisfying rotation that allows it to weave damage and healing together.

Don’t most people agree with this. Maybe the devs need to get on board

[Veis_Alveare]

None of that means WHM should be the baby healer. None of that means WHM should be weakest or the simplest. I think WHM should have its own identity as a powerful nuker. Reliant on strong personal dps and a satisfying rotation that allows it to weave damage and healing together.

Then perhaps you need to answer the basic question of how we balance that.

Does WHM get to pull AST levels of contribution via purely it's own dps or is it going to be locked out of the meta for another expansion under your idea?

[Lyth]

...

Managing 'buffs' is not an identity. Managing 'debuffs' is not an identity. There are what, 17 standard combat jobs? Let's not reserve mandatory raid spots for our favourites by cordoning off massive areas of design space.

Everyone wants those big numbers that they get from buffs/debuffs. Who cares who the highest damage dealing healer is, especially when pure damage dealers provide a progressively larger share of raid dps with each expansion? "I know you can clear on WHM, but would you mind swapping to make my numbers look better?"

I think the moment that you introduce offensive raid buffs/debuffs to a role, everyone in that role has to have it for there to be a level playing field. Alternatively, if they add a fourth healer next expansion, have SCH and AST's buff/debuff effects rewrite each other/share downtime such that you only ever want to take one of them at a time. I think the latter is less likely given that they opted not to go that way with tanks.

[GrimGale]

Then perhaps you need to answer the basic question of how we balance that.

Does WHM get to pull AST levels of contribution via purely it's own dps or is it going to be locked out of the meta for another expansion under your idea?

Leave the devs to fine-tune the numbers.

[GrimGale]

Managing 'buffs' is not an identity. Managing 'debuffs' is not an identity. There are what, 17 standard combat jobs? Let's not reserve mandatory raid spots for our favourites by cordoning off massive areas of design space.

Everyone wants those big numbers that they get from buffs/debuffs. Who cares who the highest damage dealing healer is, especially when pure damage dealers provide a progressively larger share of raid dps with each expansion? "I know you can clear on WHM, but would you mind swapping to make my numbers look better?"

I think the moment that you introduce offensive raid buffs/debuffs to a role, everyone in that role has to have it for there to be a level playing field. Alternatively, if they add a fourth healer next expansion, have SCH and AST's buff/debuff effects rewrite each other/share downtime such that you only ever want to take one of them at a time. I think the latter is less likely given that they opted not to go that way with tanks.

What exactly is an "identity" in your opinion? Managing buffs/debuffs seems pretty interesting as gameplay, and seems to come with a certain amount of unique choices. Of course it all comes down to how said activities are designed.

There seem to be two major ways to contribute to dps in FFXIV, either trough personal dps like SAM, BLM and MCH, or through giving others buffs and improving their dps, like DNC, RDM and NIN.

Healers also seem to fall under this binary in terms of design.

I agree giving jobs a sub-role might prevent a certain degree of design creativity, but I don't agree with the idea that having utility automatically makes sure that a job will be picked over another. I think pre 5.3 AST is a testament to that. AST was barely played compared to the other two even though it brought higher utility.

After what happened at the beginning of Shb, I think job homogenization is a bigger danger to job design than the "meta". Isn't homogenization one of the biggest sources of healer unhappiness after all?

[Semirhage]

After what happened at the beginning of Shb, I think job homogenization is a bigger danger to job design than the "meta". Isn't homogenization one of the biggest sources of healer unhappiness after all?

AST and SCH hogging all of the utility and effectively being good at everything created the eternal unchanging healer meta, which was part of the larger utility job meta that the homogenization in 5.0 was aimed at breaking.
Job homogenization sucks. So do two jobs always and forever being the mandatory best because utility is king and no you can't have any, stay there at the bottom of the totem pole where you belong.

All of these arbitrary design restrictions on WHM make it the baby healer. Must be straightforward, can't alienate newbies. Must have zero utility, the other two have claimed nearly all of healer design space as their "identity". Must be the GCD healer because GCDs are more straightforward. Up until ShB (and even a few times after I've seen it) can't have a decent damage rotation because "doing damage is SCH's thing since they started from a DPS class". So with all these restrictions the devs and the community believe it has, what CAN WHM be good at?

Conversely, nobody has ever come to agree on what SCH's identity is. It's the DPS healer. It's the shield healer. It's the pet healer. It's the oGCD healer. It's the debuff healer.

It's because Scholar, eater of worlds, has devoured so much design space as its exclusive domain over the last three expansions that it became the good at everything healer. I think design space can also be healthier if we mix things around a bit. Not in a homogenizing way, but if you say, have twice as many debuffs as the next most debuff heavy healer, and those debuffs build differently and do different things, you've got a clear focus without staking exclusive claim.