Healer Unhappiness exists on the Jap Healing Forums as well.

[Lyth]

What exactly is an "identity" in your opinion?

Identities are unique gameplay experiences. While there's no point in creating multiple jobs if they all play the same, there's equally no point if everyone feels compelled to pick the same set of eight jobs, expansion after expansion. You need to have alternate methods of achieving the same end goals. There is a way to simultaneously achieve both "Identity" and "Balance" that is neither Stormblood nor Shadowbringers, respectively.

There are some things that are an essential part of a role. You can't design a healer job whose identity consists of "actions which increase a party member's HP" to the exclusion of the others because that's fundamental to being a healer. You can't design a tank job whose identity gives them a monopoly on invulns.

Balancing out raid buffs is tricky enough on DPS jobs, even when you can pretty much reduce the performance of the role down to a single number. A number of longstanding raid buffs have been toned back such that they're a lot less dramatic than they used to be. And at the end of the day, even if you get everything mathematically balanced, the average DPS player doesn't really care who's on top of the healer damage charts when it's only ever going to be just a fraction of theirs. They just want you to press the magic button that makes their numbers bigger.

I think that if you want to achieve "identity" in a fair way, it has to be by either using alternate means to achieve a similar goal, or by providing two different benefits that are not directly comparable. For example, how does a proximity-based movement speed buff compare with an invisibility spell that makes a player less likely to be selected for a targeted mechanic? How does AoE knockback prevention compare against being able to set up a temporary teleporter between two points on the arena? It's alright to have unique situational abilities, so long as the game designers create situations for them to be used. Cover has historically seen some pretty interesting uses for this reason.

I don't think that raid buffs should be the focus of the discussion. Now that some healer jobs have them (read: everyone except for WHM), it should by rights be standardised across the board. Where you can make healers more interesting is by giving them tools to solve raid mechanics in a way that allows for greater dps efficiency. Movement and positioning is criminally underutilised in this game's design. Another place that you can differentiate them is by expanding on their respective resource management systems. MP can't be the new TP.

[glamazon]

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..

Disagree
Bard has many buffs so should machinist also have them? No. Should dancer? No. Because then why not just have one role and get rid of those others of everything is the same. We want diversity.

You don’t see scholars crying that they can’t buff. You don’t see ast crying that they can’t debuff. I personally could care less who does what as long as they are all different from Each other.

This is why the classes have gotten so bland and similar.

[Semirhage]

Bard has many buffs so should machinist also have them? No. Should dancer? No.

Dancer is packed to bursting with buffs.

You don’t see scholars crying that they can’t buff. You don’t see ast crying that they can’t debuff.

I see Scholars and Astrologians bitching for a return to Stormblood/Heavensward design all the time. Fey Wind and Disable would presumably be part of that.

This is yet more AST/SCH "WHM should never ever have utility because Reasons". Great Healer Circular Argument strikes again.

[Absurdity]

Dancer is packed to bursting with buffs.



I see Scholars and Astrologians bitching for a return to Stormblood/Heavensward design all the time. Fey Wind and Disable would presumably be part of that.

This is yet more AST/SCH "WHM should never ever have utility because Reasons". Great Healer Circular Argument strikes again.

Tbh most of those threads I've seen want to go back to Stormblood because both healers were less of a snoozefest or a clunky, buggy mess, their utility being completely irrelevant to the point. I've yet to see one that just blatantly states "I want Stormblood back because my cards/ fey wind were stronger than they are now" and nowhere in those do they demand WHM to go back to being a trainwreck.


Dancer just shows that SE doesn't actually know what they want.

"We want to get away from all this group utility" because the Nin, Drg, Brd, Sch, Ast meta and people who thought meta comps were the be-all-end-all of raiding were causing too many issues.

Then they remove all the utility from bard and several other jobs but create a new job whose core identity is group utility...

[Mortex]

Disagree
Bard has many buffs so should machinist also have them? No. Should dancer? No. Because then why not just have one role and get rid of those others of everything is the same. We want diversity.

You don’t see scholars crying that they can’t buff. You don’t see ast crying that they can’t debuff. I personally could care less who does what as long as they are all different from Each other.

This is why the classes have gotten so bland and similar.

Yeah the problem with that is that dancer is the only one that isn’t bad as hell in comparison too brd and mch, and that’s only the case when you pair it up with a samurai. Like they did butcher physical range. Ofc you can clear content with it ,but they are bad jobs at the moment. The same with monk. Why play monk when samurai is more flexible and deals more dmg and can be made to fit into every burst phase in min max ( and it’s boring as hell).

[Absurdity]

Yeah the problem with that is that dancer is the only one that isn’t bad as hell in comparison too brd and mch, and that’s only the case when you pair it up with a samurai. Like they did butcher physical range. Ofc you can clear content with it ,but they are bad jobs at the moment. The same with monk. Why play monk when samurai is more flexible and deals more dmg and can be made to fit into every burst phase in min max ( and it’s boring as hell).

I think MCH is in an okay spot dps wise. Their personal dps often beats dancer's rdps, it's just simply rather dull to play compared to it's carpal tunnel inducing nightmare version from Stormblood.


Bard on the other hand has been suffering from an identity crisis this whole expansion.

[Lyth]

...

You don't need to read my post in its entirety to disagree with it. You do, however, need to at least attempt to read it if you want to formulate a relevant response.

Buffs and debuffs are potentially equivalent ways of achieving the same goal. An action that reduces boss damage by 10% is the same as giving everyone 10% DR. Why would anyone complain about the methodology of that? (Granted, there are situational advantages to each). But to cordon off AST as being the "buff healer" and SCH as being the "debuff healer" doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. There is no one "buff dps" job with complete exclusivity on the ability to use raid buffs or one "debuff dps" job with complete exclusivity on the ability to use raid debuffs. There isn't the design space for it.

This isn't about identity, it's about protecting your turf. If your concern was about job variety, then you'd be asking "how many unique ways could a healer job help boost raid damage against the boss?" There's more than just two. Even delineating raidwide damage boosts into "buffs" and "debuffs" is overly broad. How does a simple damage boost stack up against an ability that reduces the recasts on your cooldowns? How does a bigger single player boost match up against a smaller raidwide boost? If a key part of the healer role is support, then we need to find more ways to allow that to happen.

[Semirhage]

Tbh most of those threads I've seen want to go back to Stormblood because both healers were less of a snoozefest or a clunky, buggy mess, their utility being completely irrelevant to the point. I've yet to see one that just blatantly states "I want Stormblood back because my cards/ fey wind were stronger than they are now" and nowhere in those do they demand WHM to go back to being a trainwreck.

Nah, they just demand that WHM continue to have zero utility, that they remain stronger because they're "more complex", that WHM gets...ehh some work somewhere to make it good, but dear god nothing other than basic damage and healing otherwise it'll compromise AST/SCH "identity", and some prevarication about "making the numbers work".

They don't ask for WHM to be a trainwreck, they just paint a picture that leaves an outline around a trainwreck-shaped hole in the artwork and then spend an expansion Surprised Pikachu-ing over the trainwreck Squeenix fills in there.

[Mortex]

I think MCH is in an okay spot dps wise. Their personal dps often beats dancer's rdps, it's just simply rather dull to play compared to it's carpal tunnel inducing nightmare version from Stormblood.


Bard on the other hand has been suffering from an identity crisis this whole expansion.

Well yeah mch is ok but that’s about it .dancer just has around in min max 1000 raid dps more then mch, that’s a insane number.

[Deceptus]

Disagree
Bard has many buffs so should machinist also have them? No. Should dancer? No. Because then why not just have one role and get rid of those others of everything is the same. We want diversity.

You don’t see scholars crying that they can’t buff. You don’t see ast crying that they can’t debuff. I personally could care less who does what as long as they are all different from Each other.

This is why the classes have gotten so bland and similar.

Many healers in general have resolved ourselves to the fact that we aren't getting anything close to good damage ever again so we are looking for buffs and debuffs to fill that time.