Live letter expectations.

[Deceptus]

Semantics, ones that frankly the Healer community is just tired of hearing.

They all play the same, all of my buttons are in the exact same place on all my healers, because they functionally identical in every single way.

Lol I'm not the only one who basically does this ><

[Rilifane]

The point is that most of WHM, SCH and AST kit functions almost the same in practice.
There are differences but they are so minor that they don't matter unless you're doing nugget stomps or space laser party or terminal booms at low/ min ilvl.
COpp, CU, WD, SS and Asylum all have roughly the same potency while functioning roughly the same; they're basically your Medica II on a cooldown.
Enough to not make a difference when countering the typical raidwide. They're all "slow heals" and while 3 of 5 have a very limited range, the raidwides where you have to stand and stay spread for some time afterwards are so rare, it's usually one per boss at most. Star is burst heal but potency is roughly the same so in practice, it gets used in a very similiar way.

ED, CI, Tetra, Benison and Lustrate are also fairly similiar and used in much the same way: ST heal as necessary - your Cure II on a cooldown; Benison and Diurnal CI shield but unless the target doesn't take any damage at all in the next 15/30s, the difference between a heal and a shield is once again only noticable in edge cases in practice. Although Excog has a slightly different niche by automatically triggering below 50%, it's still often used in the same way you'd use any of the other skills.

Horoscope, Rapture and Fey Blessing once again fill the same niche; it's your Medica equivalent on a cooldown.

And "But there was this one case in 1960 when someone pulled a gigabrain move to save the raid with the small difference between aoe heals" isn't exactly a strong argument for saying that healers play noticaby different from one another in terms of healing. Yes, there are edge cases when it matters that SS has a 10% damage mitigation or Asylum a +10% healing on oGCDs and GCDs or CU a 10% mitigation for a tick in Diurnal, but they are rare and are either only seen in ultimates or somewhere around min ilvl.
Which still leaves us using any of the more-or-less Medica IIs to counter a typical raidwide without really noticing a difference and any of the Cure IIs on a cooldown to keep a tank alive or heal someone that ate extra/ missed an aoe heal.
Theoretical differences don't mean much if you rarely or (depending on the type of content you're doing) never notice them in practice. And that has nothing to with not understanding a class or not playing it properly. It's a simple fact that most of our skills are copypasted GCD bread and butter skills on a cooldown and lack synergy.

[Roeshel]

On lightspeed, what it does is shave off 2.5s of cast time which is enough to make its spells except raise instant.
Presence improves spellspeed, its literally the same but weaker.

This is most clearly seen when you hardcast a raise. Ast has 2.5s knocked off its 8s cast, whm has roughly the same depending on your spellspeed. so yeah...they function identically even if their design is different.

given most duties you dont use neutral sect because its not available or you dont need the second benefits, it ends up performing the same function as temperance: most players will use it because its pretty rather than when its useful

With PoM you gain 1 extra GCD cast. With LS you get 1 extra GCD and you lose 1 GCD when the effects end. The abilities are different. They can do similar things despite being different - casting Raise/Ascend while under the respective buff is one of them. This does not make them identical. Claiming that they are is a fallacy.

Lol I'm not the only one who basically does this ><

People who have all of their buttons at the same spot for every healer job are either exaggerating or don't know how to play. WHM has 6 less useful buttons to press than a SCH and 5 less than an AST. There is simply nothing to put in the slots you use for SCH or AST when you play as WHM. Claiming that SCH plays like AST is outright madness.

[Sebazy]

Claiming that SCH plays like AST is outright madness.

The problem is, once you know an encounter, your healing downtime should be around 60-70%+ across the bulk of group content (potentially getting significantly higher in 24 man, DR etc).

The end result is that yes, each healer job has significant distinctions within their healing kit. However this is ignoring the great big elephant that's stood on the healer role's toe right now.

Hitting your nuke button between 5 and 10 times more than your second most used button is a very easy bar to hit in the majority of group content outside of 4 man dungeons and in turn, it's not particularly challenging to have your 30 second dot second in the list with very roughly 2 times the number of casts of 3rd place.

Given that healer gameplay is so heavily loaded onto 2 buttons out of a kit of ~30+ abilities irrespective of which healer you're on, is it really a surprise that role vets are complaining that the different healers all feel the same now?

[FoxCh40s]

With PoM you gain 1 extra GCD cast. With LS you get 1 extra GCD and you lose 1 GCD when the effects end. The abilities are different. They can do similar things despite being different - casting Raise/Ascend while under the respective buff is one of them. This does not make them identical. Claiming that they are is a fallacy.



People who have all of their buttons at the same spot for every healer job are either exaggerating or don't know how to play. WHM has 6 less useful buttons to press than a SCH and 5 less than an AST. There is simply nothing to put in the slots you use for SCH or AST when you play as WHM. Claiming that SCH plays like AST is outright madness.

Roeshel, please don't tell me how all the jobs used to be, I've played all of them for literally for YEARS, 8 of them to be precise. I know it all, I know how it works.

The real issue we are arguing here is as Sebazy said, we push one damn button 98% of the time, and if we're really good, we can do it 99% of time.

[FoxCh40s]

The problem is, once you know an encounter, your healing downtime should be around 60-70%+ across the bulk of group content (potentially getting significantly higher in 24 man, DR etc).

The end result is that yes, each healer job has significant distinctions within their healing kit. However this is ignoring the great big elephant that's stood on the healer role's toe right now.

Hitting your nuke button between 5 and 10 times more than your second most used button is a very easy bar to hit in the majority of group content outside of 4 man dungeons and in turn, it's not particularly challenging to have your 30 second dot second in the list with very roughly 2 times the number of casts of 3rd place.

Given that healer gameplay is so heavily loaded onto 2 buttons out of a kit of ~30+ abilities irrespective of which healer you're on, is it really a surprise that role vets are complaining that the different healers all feel the same now?

I'm just very tired of arguing this exact point. They ARE the same, you do not need your full kit. I've seen bad healers going through dungeons casting nothing but AoE Regen Heal, Cure 2 equivalent, Instant Heal on oGCD.

We don't even remotely have to use the entire kit.

[Boizinho]

This is a new level of splitting hairs. In my kitchen cabinet there are circular plates with patterns on them, and circular plates that are roughly the same size but are white porcelain. I stack both of them in the same spot. They're not 100% identical, but they are the same as far as I'm concerned. If I need a plate, I will open that cabinet and look in that specific area and I will find a plate. Will it have patterns or not? Who knows? Do I care? No.

If one person is lacking a decent portion of their HP and I need an instant-cast oGCD with high potency, I will press the button that contains that spell. Will it be called Essential Dignity, or will it be called Tetragrammaton? Do I care?

If someone is about to take damage and I have a free weave slot, I will press the button that contains the oGCD spell that gives someone a shield and has a 30 second cooldown. Will that button be blue, or yellow? Will the shield be 400 potency or 500? Will that matter?

If the whole raid is about to take a huge amount of damage and I need extra healing potency + mitigation, I will press the button that does that. Will it be called Neutral Sect, or Temperance?

Having nothing to put in a particular slot because WHM lacks options isn't a good argument. A level 79 Bard won't have a keybind for Apex Arrow, but every other keybind is identical to a level 80 Bard.

Despite the fact that we're pretending this is a disagreement, the claims about homogenization and the claims about empty hotbars are coming from the same place, and it's the fact that WHM is more or less just a gimped Diurnal AST at level 80.

[Roeshel]

I'm just very tired of arguing this exact point. They ARE the same, you do not need your full kit. I've seen bad healers going through dungeons casting nothing but AoE Regen Heal, Cure 2 equivalent, Instant Heal on oGCD.

We don't even remotely have to use the entire kit.

"They are the same, you do not need your full kit"
According to that logic, anyone can claim that every class plays the same way. You do not need to use your full kit. All of us can press only one button. We all play the same. Red and blue are the same. Both of them are colors. Everything is identical.

With all seriousness, how do you expect such type of wrong feedback to be validated by the GMs?

In case you haven't realized after 8 years of playing, normal GCD heals exist to facilitate bad play most of the time. The way to facilitate bad play is the same for every healer. It is bad play, nobody who actually cares about the role uses it, those who don't care also shouldn't complain that they use the same buttons for every healer.

For AST you can be pressing a lot more other buttons while you are pushing your 1 button. People shouldn't be disregarding the healing kits of healers when we are talking dps-ing because "oh well I have nothing to heal in Satasha". At level cap AST has 5 useful utility spells to press during combat that are not related to healing at all and 8 that are. It is crystal clear that you are meant to be using them in between DPS casts. Something that almost never happens in DF. Gravity & Malefic had their cast time reduced from 2.5 to 1.5s so that you can play your job. Arguing that GMs are disincentivizing healers to DPS makes no sense with the overall changes that they've made. Art of War is instant so that you can heal while DPSing. Holy stuns targets so that you don't have to heal while DPSing. Things are not that exciting when it comes to ST which is something that will most probably change with Endwalker. In the benchmark, you can see Ast casting Malefic IV which means that healers didn't get an actual upgrade of their respective nuke spells, and maybe instead of an upgrade we got another offensive spell. Plus Sage is shown casting a third offensive spell against ST here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkC1r0eJZ-c&t=321s
That's a spell that was not shown at all in the Sage reveal for reasons unknown.

Play content that does require you to use your entire kit. Savage, ultimates, PvP. Casual content is tuned for casual players.

[AnotherPerson]

The point is that most of WHM, SCH and AST kit functions almost the same in practice.
There are differences but they are so minor that they don't matter unless you're doing nugget stomps or space laser party or terminal booms at low/ min ilvl.

And "But there was this one case in 1960 when someone pulled a gigabrain move to save the raid with the small difference between aoe heals" isn't exactly a strong argument for saying that healers play noticaby different from one another in terms of healing. Yes, there are edge cases when it matters that SS has a 10% damage mitigation or Asylum a +10% healing on oGCDs and GCDs or CU a 10% mitigation for a tick in Diurnal, but they are rare and are either only seen in ultimates or somewhere around min ilvl.
Which still leaves us using any of the more-or-less Medica IIs to counter a typical raidwide without really noticing a difference and any of the Cure IIs on a cooldown to keep a tank alive or heal someone that ate extra/ missed an aoe heal.
Theoretical differences don't mean much if you rarely or (depending on the type of content you're doing) never notice them in practice. And that has nothing to with not understanding a class or not playing it properly. It's a simple fact that most of our skills are copypasted GCD bread and butter skills on a cooldown and lack synergy.

To be fair, the healer toolkit is tuned for min ILV & blind encounters, not for overgeared encounters, so it makes sense that Min ILV is the only time where each healing skill's individual difference matters for situational usage. Doing new content when it comes out means players are at min ILV, and that's when you can feel the difference between healers when people eat vulnerability stacks + start dying (including the healers), and MP starts to become a problem since no one knows the mechanics yet and our stats (total HP/Def/DPS/healing output) is significantly weaker in comparison. You see this mainly on expansion release or within the same patch as the content released. Having those nuances change gameplay immensely (like where a Collective Unconscious would've saved you cause of the 10% mitigation on snapshot vs just placing down an asylum bubble for the 10% heal bonus after being hit). These nuances are more for moments where no one is playing right and vulnerability stacks are a normal occurrence - which again, happens mainly when content is new. The more unknown variables there are, the bigger the situational differences matter in handling them.

After people get better in both gear and in mechanics, all of those naunced differences stops becoming an issue again because we're able to cover those issues with pure stats and gameplay knowledge. What would've been a lethal attack or high raidwide damage that requires a shield, full HP, or mitigation turns into just a regular aoe or cleave that can be healed after taking the damage. What would've been people eating vulnerability stacks and getting weakness / brink of death debuff from dying to the same mechanic eventually no longer happens because people learned to avoid them with the passing of time. Thus, healing becomes a lot less strenuous, and we have a lot more downtime to compensate.

With better gear, players can just pick whatever healer you want, and I assume they went with this route because it would be more problematic if one healer can heal better than another and people just don't want to party with said healer because they can't function as well as the other ones cause of big skill differences for survival.

That's not inherently bad game design. It's rewarding to all players to preform better, feels like they got stronger with better gear, and no longer locks specific compositions out for not having said healer because all skills can work similarly when nuances no longer matter. With the introduction of Sage and the split between Pure healer vs Shield healers, I do assume both WHM/AST will have skill differences but function similarly. This is also the case for Sage and Scholar, or otherwise you would have people choosing a specific job for each 'healer role' because they can do xyz better than the other. The only thing lacking now is just a decent DPS toolkit instead of just mashing Glare/Malefic/Broil over and over again.

[FoxCh40s]

"They are the same, you do not need your full kit"
According to that logic, anyone can claim that every class plays the same way. You do not need to use your full kit. All of us can press only one button. We all play the same. Red and blue are the same. Both of them are colors. Everything is identical.

With all seriousness, how do you expect such type of wrong feedback to be validated by the GMs?

In case you haven't realized after 8 years of playing, normal GCD heals exist to facilitate bad play most of the time. The way to facilitate bad play is the same for every healer. It is bad play, nobody who actually cares about the role uses it, those who don't care also shouldn't complain that they use the same buttons for every healer.

For AST you can be pressing a lot more other buttons while you are pushing your 1 button. People shouldn't be disregarding the healing kits of healers when we are talking dps-ing because "oh well I have nothing to heal in Satasha". At level cap AST has 5 useful utility spells to press during combat that are not related to healing at all and 8 that are. It is crystal clear that you are meant to be using them in between DPS casts. Something that almost never happens in DF. Gravity & Malefic had their cast time reduced from 2.5 to 1.5s so that you can play your job. Arguing that GMs are disincentivizing healers to DPS makes no sense with the overall changes that they've made. Art of War is instant so that you can heal while DPSing. Holy stuns targets so that you don't have to heal while DPSing. Things are not that exciting when it comes to ST which is something that will most probably change with Endwalker. In the benchmark, you can see Ast casting Malefic IV which means that healers didn't get an actual upgrade of their respective nuke spells, and maybe instead of an upgrade we got another offensive spell. Plus Sage is shown casting a third offensive spell against ST here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkC1r0eJZ-c&t=321s
That's a spell that was not shown at all in the Sage reveal for reasons unknown.

Play content that does require you to use your entire kit. Savage, ultimates, PvP. Casual content is tuned for casual players.

*long heavy sigh with temple rub*

You just miss the point, constantly. I'm done arguing.