Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Rilifane]

But it was also their damage, I remember the rumor going around that a PLD Clemency-ing was less of a potency loss than a WHM casting a heal.

You also know that WHM was the least mobile healer and relied on healing getting hard-carried by their co heal, right?
WHM dps was strong in very specific scenarios: the party mitigated well and used what free heals they had, no oopsie-whoopsies during the run, the party was willing to plan around their turret (no, not the BLM, they were more mobile than WHM... by a lot)... oh, and you should bring a co heal that is both able and willing to carry the healing.
That allowed WHM to spam Glare while being able to ignore Lilies unless absolutely necessary for movement & Assize weaving.
Basically: have 7 people cater to the clunky pile of trash that WHM was and still is and WHM is competetive...for a glorious week or two.

And for the record: WHM still relies on the co heal carrying the healing.
Look at any high performing WHM and you'll notice there's a huge gap in healing in addition to very good party mitigation. The highest dps numbers are only possible with good mitigation, co heal carry and a bit of gear and it's still dead last.
But it's okay because we need an accessible, easy baby healer so it can't ever perform adequately in both dps and healing. No, sir.

[Liam_Harper]

I don't disagree that WHM is the healer that needs the most care from the dev team at the moment, just was pointing out we don't need different job builds because we can just play a different job. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't WHM meta near the beginning of ShB because it's damage was so high? I know it's still one of the best healers for TEA, where it beats out two of the tanks in DPS. Plus all DRK mains love a WHM main lol. Again, not saying it's good now, or was fun to play then, just saying that even after the introduction of AST it still finds it's place.

This idea of "boring simple jobs are fine because you can go play another job if you don't like it" is nonsense.

First you can't even guarantee you'll like the other jobs. You may hate AST and its clunky cards, rng and useless fluff buttons like Astrodyne and enjoy WHM's aesthetic and core design. But because you have more than one braincell and want to push a button more than twice a minute, you're meant to go play AST for your pure heal.
You can't guarantee your complex job won't be ruined for accessibility either. Many SMN mains used to enjoy the complexity and reward of their class. They never asked for it to become the window licking job and had no choice in the matter. You can't just kick a veteran who's enjoyed a class for years off their job, hand it over to Timmy who never asked for it and say "it's for the good of the game!". It's really not.

Second, the idea that some classes have to be braindead and have no skill cap to be accessible is rubbish. Especially in a game where the content itself is already accessible. Not only that, we have a lot of dps which are extremely easy to pick up but have good apm and lots of depth to master. Why can't this apply to healers and tanks? "Easy to learn, hard to master" has been a thing in gaming for years when it comes to class design, but all of a sudden ff14 players pretend it doesn't exist.

Third, and even worse is the idea that not only should some classes be braindead and accessible, they should now suck too to be fair. This is rubbing salt in the wound. Let's say you love the aesthetic of a job, then Enix comes along and rips the engagement away to hand it over to Timmy, then to kick you while you're down they tell you your job must be bad too. All you can do is play the class you hate if you care about contributing to your team.

The simple fact is that it has nothing to do with catering to casuals. Players who argue for simplicity just want an easy mode. They want a class that can clear hard content even if they're not good at the game and don't want to learn. Essentially they want a light version of a cheat code.
It's human. Cheat codes have been around for years and countless people use them. This is why people will argue against depth, because they don't want that taken away. They want to Glare and Medica II their way to p4s clears. But it doesn't mean it's good for the game. Stop arguing for it as "beneficial".

No WHM is not "the best healer in TEA". There aren't even 200 TEA parses for each healer this expansion or a full top 50 speed run yet. It was only good early ShB because AST started out bad and SCH scales better outside of early prog. Raid buffs scale so WHM will always drop as expansions progress. Living Dead is getting a rework soon, so DRK mains won't even care either. WHM has no place.

[Ixon]

You also know that WHM was the least mobile healer and relied on healing getting hard-carried by their co heal, right?
WHM dps was strong in very specific scenarios: the party mitigated well and used what free heals they had, no oopsie-whoopsies during the run, the party was willing to plan around their turret (no, not the BLM, they were more mobile than WHM... by a lot)... oh, and you should bring a co heal that is both able and willing to carry the healing.
That allowed WHM to spam Glare while being able to ignore Lilies unless absolutely necessary for movement & Assize weaving.
Basically: have 7 people cater to the clunky pile of trash that WHM was and still is and WHM is competetive...for a glorious week or two.

And for the record: WHM still relies on the co heal carrying the healing.
Look at any high performing WHM and you'll notice there's a huge gap in healing in addition to very good party mitigation. The highest dps numbers are only possible with good mitigation, co heal carry and a bit of gear and it's still dead last.
But it's okay because we need an accessible, easy baby healer so it can't ever perform adequately in both dps and healing. No, sir.

I wasn't looking at the number one parsing WHM.. I was looking at speed kills. So it's not like the co-healer was a grey-DPS, everyone on the highest speed kills was 99 percentile.. Fun fact, this is about the same reason why people bring DRK's, cause they do a lot of damage, it's not like people love living dead or DRK's lack of sustain..

"But it's okay because we need an accessible, easy baby healer so it can't ever perform adequately in both dps and healing. No, sir." and I didn't say this at all?

[Ixon]

This idea of "boring simple jobs are fine because you can go play another job if you don't like it" is nonsense.

You can not like it, but it's the direction of the game. They have a hard time keeping 20 jobs balanced, you really want to trust SE with 20 Jobs plus multiple builds per job? No thanks. And if you don't like any job in FF, then don't play FF? I don't know what to tell you. You can't force your FAVORITE job to always be how you want it to be. There is a weird job identity that people have where their main is THIER job and SE ruined THIER job. It's no ones job minus SE's to do as they please, you can fight it, but good luck once they pick a direction.(RIP HW Tanks)

SE has always made some jobs easier than others.. this isn't a new concept. WHM is DESIGNED to be the entry level healer, just as PLD was designed to be the entry level tank(probably WAR now).

And idk where you have been, but this game has been catering to casuals since SB. The entire scaled down difficulty of this expansion that is felt was entirely due to SE scaling down the difficulty due to the recent influx of new players. There isn't even a dungeon in EW that has more than a two mob pack pull.

WHM being the best in TEA is subjective, it's the highest DPSing healer by a looooong shot, and is the only healer that can reliable grab all 4 jag dolls for the AoE burn.

In the end you are twisting my words mate. I never said WHM is perfect now, and never said it was perfect then. Stating the facts that it WAS meta for a while due to it's damage is just that, stating facts. I have even said on multiple occasions that it's the healer in most need of work by the devs.

[IDontPetLalas]

I don't disagree that WHM is the healer that needs the most care from the dev team at the moment, just was pointing out we don't need different job builds because we can just play a different job. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't WHM meta near the beginning of ShB because it's damage was so high? I know it's still one of the best healers for TEA, where it beats out two of the tanks in DPS. Plus all DRK mains love a WHM main lol. Again, not saying it's good now, or was fun to play then, just saying that even after the introduction of AST it still finds it's place.

This makes no sense at all. Here's a metaphor for you - it would be like telling a customer that wants a chocolate cake that the customer should just take the vanilla cake right next to it. if the customer really wants a chocolate cake, make a good chocolate cake, don't try to convince him/her that vanilla is just as good. what's even worse, don't try telling that customer to order the vanilla cake because some stranger likes vanilla. You (might just) get that cake right in your face,

[SeverianLyonesse]

This makes no sense at all. Here's a metaphor for you - it would be like telling a customer that wants a chocolate cake that the customer should just take the vanilla cake right next to it. if the customer really wants a chocolate cake, make a good chocolate cake, don't try to convince him/her that vanilla is just as good. what's even worse, don't try telling that customer to order the vanilla cake because some stranger likes vanilla. You (might just) get that cake right in your face,

While I don't want to disregard people who may *only* want play as one class, that is definitely not a point of appeal for XIV. And at least as far as my experience goes, it is extremely rare to encounter that sort of player.

Moreover, this analogy seems a bit underserving since the job design in XIV changes. Just because I liked vanilla PLD through earlier leveling doesn't mean I didn't switch for chocolate DRK when it became available. Just because I liked strawberry RDM in ShB doesn't mean the EW version ticks my job fantasy boxes. Right now, I voluntarily abandoned DRK and RDM because I am waiting on the next expansion to fill in holes I see in their design (as far as my personal job fantasy tastes go). And I'm okay with that because there are other jobs that appeal more to me in this current iteration of the game.

Put another way, in reality what you are describing is someone going into a Baskin Robbins wanting chocolate ice cream. Then, when discovering that they are out of chocolate ice cream because it melted on the way over, they instead to throw a tantrum or leave. It's somehow the store's fault that they have a very narrow and unadventurous palette, whereas most normal people either already like other flavors of ice cream that are in stock, or otherwise are open to trying new flavors.

[Skiros]

No thanks. And if you don't like any job in FF, then don't play FF?

I used to laugh at these sorts of responses, but now I just feel contempt and disgust.

Day by day I find it harder and harder to respect this playerbase.

I hope it becomes more and more insular and cultlike, and watch the decay as players wonder what went wrong.

99% of this playerbase's defense of the game boils down to "your preferences are wrong". But bit by bit, more and more players' preferences will start to become wrong. It's honestly pathetic that the playerbase doesn't even realize why the wider MMO audience see it as a fanatical ring and regularly mock its insane and obsessive desire to white knight every facet of the game.

I wonder if people ever realize why so many of the descriptions of FF14's community are also words used for religion? Why do people describe FF14 players as "evangelizing", for instance?

No matter, it's not like anyone can pull a zealot away from its fervor.

[Minarisweet]

In WoW I PvP'd hardcore for years throughout Vanilla and early BC as a healing/support focused hybrid Shaman build. Once the focus switched to Arena, Resto Shaman was lacking compared to Druid and my EU to NA latency was the final nail in the coffin. My character was basically dead outside of dwelling on past glories by the Orgrimmar gate.

With FFXIV's job system, at least I have the option of switching to a more viable class where my latency wouldn't make things so unforgiving. With WoW I basically had to toss aside years of HKs, gear, titles and reputation if I wanted to be active again.

And uh are you having fun with xiv pvp?

[Ixon]

I used to laugh at these sorts of responses, but now I just feel contempt and disgust.

Day by day I find it harder and harder to respect this playerbase.

I hope it becomes more and more insular and cultlike, and watch the decay as players wonder what went wrong.

99% of this playerbase's defense of the game boils down to "your preferences are wrong". But bit by bit, more and more players' preferences will start to become wrong. It's honestly pathetic that the playerbase doesn't even realize why the wider MMO audience see it as a fanatical ring and regularly mock its insane and obsessive desire to white knight every facet of the game.

I wonder if people ever realize why so many of the descriptions of FF14's community are also words used for religion? Why do people describe FF14 players as "evangelizing", for instance?

No matter, it's not like anyone can pull a zealot away from its fervor.

I've been called many a thing, but never a zealot lol. It's just called being realistic(something I know you aren't too keen on), but it is how it is. Take away the emotion, and sticking with the logic of a buisness looking to make profit. You cannot make everybody happy, no matter how hard you try, so you make the majority happy as it rakes in the most profit. Good for the wallet, bad for the hardcore players usually, but almost every company does it. I don't care about SE, they aren't paying me, I just know how drastic changes due to certain complaints have lead to changes I have not enjoyed, so I try to find changes within reason from the aspect of a business, so that everyone is a little happier.(Forums killed Frontline enjoyment. Change my mind)

I loved HW DRK. It was super fun and engaging, but when SB hit, I disliked it, disliked all the tanks playstyle and went DPS when I realised why they chose that direction and knew they werent going back despite the countless forum posts. ShB dropped, GNB was a tank I enjoyed, been with it ever since till they take that in a direction I dont like or something more fun comes around(Corsair pls). Some people have some wild takes on what they want out of the game that won't ever happen, so it's easier and more realistic to compromise with the direction the devs are taking. If the direction is completely off its tracks, you show your frustration on the forums and show with your wallet by not playing. It hasn't come to that for me so I still play, but if its come to that for others, and you've tried everything you could, protest where it hurts a business the most is all I can say.

This isn't to say I DON'T want change. I think every job in the game could use some change, some way more than others for sure. Just know that SE has no obligation to make YOUR job play the way YOU want it, and highly expects people to play other jobs they find more enjoyable, as that is a key benefit to being able to play all jobs on one character. However, I do agree that healers should be given more DPS options more equal to that of their tank counterparts, as that is the direction the game has gone, far away from its traditional ARR trinity roots.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

...jesus that's some dramatic reaction.

I used to laugh at these sorts of responses, but now I just feel contempt and disgust.
Day by day I find it harder and harder to respect this playerbase.
I hope it becomes more and more insular and cultlike, and watch the decay as players wonder what went wrong.

...jesus that's some dramatic reaction and a half.

99% of this playerbase's defense of the game boils down to "your preferences are wrong". But bit by bit, more and more players' preferences will start to become wrong. It's honestly pathetic that the playerbase doesn't even realize why the wider MMO audience see it as a fanatical ring and regularly mock its insane and obsessive desire to white knight every facet of the game.

The only one who is interpreting it as such is you. It doesn't boil down to "your preferences are wrong", it usually boils down to people giving the advice of "if you have absolutely nothing you like in this game, maybe don't stress yourself mentally and don't play it if you simply don't like it". As much as criticism towards the game and the playerbase is welcome, take a step back and think if whatever change you advocate for is actually perceived as good by a significant portion of players. Additionally, check if problems your have with the game actually align with a significant portion of other players.

Lastly, consider how realistic whatever thing irks you to actually be acknowledged by the developers. There is indeed "White-Knighting", but there is also seeing a wolf in everything and crying about it.

I wonder if people ever realize why so many of the descriptions of FF14's community are also words used for religion? Why do people describe FF14 players as "evangelizing", for instance?
No matter, it's not like anyone can pull a zealot away from its fervor.

Look, if you want to talk mad sh** about the community, at least prove something for once and cite sources about what you just claimed.