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

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I’ve already given you numerous examples. It’s not me being “ willfully ignorant”, let’s cut it with the snark alright? I don’t see the need to try to ego boost anything. Healers,dps,tanks, they all have their roles to play equally, they’re all equally important. I’m sorry, but the days where a healer is incredibly necessary is over. That’s not to say they aren’t needed, and that’s not to say deaths can’t be attributed to bad healers, but to the extent you’re making it sound is just false.

A dps dying on convergence in a week 1 raiding scenario could very well mean a wipe to enrage.

A tank going down during convergence could mean the stack or line marker hitting the wrong area and causing a wipe. A healing going down during this would mean at the most, dps need to use more mitigation for that run and the healer just needs to properly mitigate and heal more, entirely doable and something i’ve experienced myself. Almost every mechanic in savage period has a component where if anyone dies, it can cause a wipe. This isn’t a healer only issue lol. Either way this is completely derailing from the point of this thread. Bottom line, healers are beyond gutted and ignored by the devs. Responsibility has nothing to do with this argument whatsoever, unless someone is trying to argue that healers shouldn’t get more dps options because it would make them stop healing, in which case i’d rather not debate with someone with that kind of flawed thinking.

It can be argued with a higher Ilvl a healers death is also less impact because the party can take more damage than normal, the remaining healer can heal more than normal, the tanks can take more damage and depending on which tanks, can heal more as well. Same with the dps. Again, it goes both ways…or triple ways i guess.

[Havenchild]

A dps dying on convergence in a week 1 raiding scenario could very well mean a wipe to enrage.

A tank going down during convergence could mean the stack or line marker hitting the wrong area and causing a wipe. A healing going down during this would mean at the most, dps need to use more mitigation for that run and the healer just needs to properly mitigate and heal more, entirely doable and something i’ve experienced myself. Almost every mechanic in savage period has a component where if anyone dies, it can cause a wipe. This isn’t a healer only issue lol. Either way this is completely derailing from the point of this thread. Bottom line, healers are beyond gutted and ignored by the devs. Responsibility has nothing to do with this argument whatsoever, unless someone is trying to argue that healers shouldn’t get more dps options because it would make them stop healing, in which case i’d rather not debate with someone with that kind of flawed thinking.

You literally repeated everything I said, but tried to change a word or two different to make it sound like you had a different point.

You skew to:

A DPS dying week 1 - Why use this example, when I literally stated as gearing of the whole party improves, this almost doesn't matter at later points (DPS Check Enrage Context only).
A Tank going down?

I literally stated:

- A Tank going down during Convergence DOES directly affect the survivability of the raid.

Same with a healer:

- A Healer down during Convergence almost directly affects the survivability of the raid much in the way the tank does.

Are you even reading anymore?

But there are alot of mechanics, which of course you ignored, where a death on a healer specifically is far more critical.

Also it's NOT an irrelevant conversation point and that is the part you and many others on this thread are failing to understand. The perception of healing by the masses seems to be leaning towards either complexity, or too much responsibility. This is proven again both by PF (lack of healers) and the consistent and considerable amount of feedback they have had from players (forums) and likely data on their end which they themselves have voiced, in terms of play rates of the roles. These things fuel literally every balance patch they have had since HW and if you were around long enough (not sure based on your join date), you would know this to be true.

Players have consistently clamoured for less button bloat and management on healers. That sentiment is far more prevalent in the player base than not. It's why AST Cards were changed, it's why WHM / SCH lost Cleric Stance, its why SCH lost Miasma, Miasma 2 / Bane etc.
The vocal minority on these forums, in this thread, pales in comparison. You can have your opinions on what you think is a better way forward, but realistically that's not what I'd imagine the data is showing is the right direction.

SGE is the closest we'll probably get to slightly more complex healer and I'm willing to bet, without a shadow of a doubt, that it will lose some complexity in 7.0.

[Absurdity]

Also it's NOT an irrelevant conversation point and that is the part you and many others on this thread are failing to understand. The perception of healing by the masses seems to be leaning towards either complexity, or too much responsibility. This is proven again both by PF (lack of healers) and the consistent and considerable about of feedback they have had from players (forums) and likely data on their end which they themselves have voiced, in terms of play rates of the roles. These things fuel literally every balance patch they have had since HW and if you were around long enough (not sure based on your join date), you would know this to be true.

The lack of healers in PF can just as easily be explained by the role being incredibly boring to play. Healers are essentially the exact same as they were in ShB but we're still seeing a decline compared to last expansion despite the lack of additional complexity or responsibility.


I also highly doubt that SE's data shows them why people aren't playing the role, only that it's declining. Whether or not that is because the average player considers it "too hard" or "too boring" is really anyone's guess.

The only clearly visible feedback we have as to why people don't want to play healer anymore is from healer mains in this forum, of which the vast majority considers the role to be a mess with boring gameplay and no clear vision behind it's design.

[Havenchild]

The lack of healers in PF can just as easily be explained by the role being incredibly boring to play. Healers are essentially the exact same as they were in ShB but we're still seeing a decline compared to last expansion despite the lack of additional complexity or responsibility.

If that were true, why have healers been in such a heavy decline since the beginning of HW Raids, when they were arguably far more involved than their current iterations and their DPS became much more important?

In fact, the most popular healer at the time was WHM followed by AST and then SCH (lowest play rate), because SCH was the most complex at the time to play correctly. Mind you, at the time, this was a big complaint on the forums.

When SB hit, they nuked the SCH kit and it went up higher than AST play rate wise. AST got nuked next in SHB and it went higher as well.

History definitely leans towards simplification of the healers has increased player rates of them.

The only clearly visible feedback we have as to why people don't want to play healer anymore is from healer mains in this forum, of which the vast majority considers the role to be a mess with boring gameplay and no clear vision behind it's design.

The forums, more specifically the NA forums, are such a hilariously small vocal minority in the bigger pie. While their play rate data doesn't DIRECTLY show the REASON, it likely illustrates a trend between the healer roles. Combining that with the feedback they are getting from their internal teams, fanfests / live events, instance testing etc,, I don't think it's rocket science to understand the conclusions that are being drawn. Alot of the development team are also players (yoshi-p has confirmed this), so they get direct feedback from the populace by mutual conversation as well.

[Laphicet]

If that were true, why have healers been in such a heavy decline since the beginning of HW Raids, when they were arguably far more involved than their current iterations and their DPS became much more important?

In fact, the most popular healer at the time was WHM followed by AST and then SCH (lowest play rate), because SCH was the most complex at the time to play correctly. Mind you, at the time, this was a big complaint on the forums.

When SB hit, they nuked the SCH kit and it went up higher than AST play rate wise. AST got nuked next in SHB and it went higher as well.

History definitely leans towards simplification of the healers has increased player rates of them.

Dafuq are you talking about, percentagewise AST and SCH dropped off like a rock in ShB, especially compared to WHM. It even took until 5.3 and the mana economy fixes for AST to not have less than a third the play rate of WHM.
Are you going by raw numbers for this data? That's a very poor metric to follow since the game's population has mostly gone up over time, look at percentages compared to the rest of the playerbase and amongst the healers themselves instead. Because if we're going by raw numbers one could claim stupid shit like "more people are playing healer now than ever before so it must be working fine the way it is" only for one to take a look at the percentages and realize healers are played at a similar rate to Shadowbringers if not less played overall, even in the expansion with a new healer.

[Havenchild]

Dafuq are you talking about, percentagewise AST and SCH dropped off like a rock in ShB, especially compared to WHM. It even took until 5.3 and the mana economy fixes for AST to not have less than a third the play rate of WHM.
Are you going by raw numbers for this data? That's a very poor metric to follow since the game's population has mostly gone up over time, look at percentages compared to the rest of the playerbase and amongst the healers themselves instead. Because if we're going by raw numbers one could claim stupid shit like "more people are playing healer now than ever before so it must be working fine the way it is" only for one to take a look at the percentages and realize healers are played at a similar rate to Shadowbringers if not less played overall, even in the expansion with a new healer.

SCH was still widely prefered to AST because Nocturnal sucked ass (when in a party with a WHM.
AST did have MP issues, but was still a favored healer post progression compared to WHM. That's been the same pattern every expansion since AST's addition sans maybe HW regardless of the MP issues.

Playerbase has exploded true and compared to every other role, healers are probably the second rarest classes to fill in PF (on Aether), tanks seemingly the rarest.

That however, does not conflict any points that I've stated though about how healers, rare as is, can become more rare if you make them more complex. I use history with SCH and AST as perfect examples of toolkits that have been nuked over time to become more accessible to the playerbase because of feedback that had been provided to the devs during HW and SB.

[Lauront]

I also highly doubt that SE's data shows them why people aren't playing the role, only that it's declining. Whether or not that is because the average player considers it "too hard" or "too boring" is really anyone's guess.

The only clearly visible feedback we have as to why people don't want to play healer anymore is from healer mains in this forum, of which the vast majority considers the role to be a mess with boring gameplay and no clear vision behind it's design.

Exactly. So-called revealed preference data is of limited use on its own; it just tells you something is happening but not why. So other than sites like this, where else are you going to get feedback to figure that out? Surveys? Maybe they do them, but what assurance is there they're doing those properly? And it doesn't seem like they even taking healer feedback on sites like this into account. All the data in the world is not going to do you any good unless you understand it and know how to (and want to) make proper use of it.

The forums, more specifically the NA forums, are such a hilariously small vocal minority in the bigger pie. While their play rate data doesn't DIRECTLY show the REASON, it likely illustrates a trend between the healer roles. Combining that with the feedback they are getting from their internal teams, fanfests / live events, instance testing etc,, I don't think it's rocket science to understand the conclusions that are being drawn. Alot of the development team are also players (yoshi-p has confirmed this), so they get direct feedback from the populace by mutual conversation as well.

So another small sample instead of this small sample. People have understandable questions of their internal testing after the recent Famitsu interview. Of the people they speak to during fanfests (e.g. streamers), how many are experienced healers, and of those, how many would be willing to jeopardise any relationship with the company through putting forward critical feedback? Even if it's just random interactions, it's still a tiny sample - even tinier than the forum in all probability. I'd argue the forum is probably the best of the widely used social media sites for the game. It's under their direct control. Any issues with it are pretty much at their own feet. Nonetheless, insofar as the NA and EU fanbases are concerned, it is geared towards having a proper conversation, unlike sites such as reddit or Twitter, or unlike fanfests, where it's a coin toss who gets through to them. So I wouldn't be so hasty to dismiss it... if they want more systematic feedback, they can use surveys or similar methods. That "bigger pie" is directly accessible to them in that sense.

[Liam_Harper]

SGE is the closest we'll probably get to slightly more complex healer and I'm willing to bet, without a shadow of a doubt, that it will lose some complexity in 7.0.

SGE is probably the easiest healer. It's just Dosis and Phlegma, same as WHM has Glare and Assize, except unlike WHM you have even more "keep your party alive" buttons and you passively heal your tank the entire time.

Less buttons doesn't = easy. WHM's toolkit is basic, but being basic makes things harder because you're so limited when it comes to high damage situations.

[HyoMinPark]

SGE is the closest we'll probably get to slightly more complex healer and I'm willing to bet, without a shadow of a doubt, that it will lose some complexity in 7.0.

Like others, and as a SGE main myself, I respectfully disagree. SGE is just about as braindead as WHM in that I spend 80% of my time spamming Dosis III and not really thinking about much else. The only bit of thought I need to put into playing SGE is mitigation planning, which is inconsequential is most content. In my static, my cohealer enjoys making mitigation spreadsheets, and we discuss any moves necessary. But it certainly doesn’t take any amount of real thinking.

The only complex healer that exists right now is AST, and that’s only if you dive into card optimization. If you just play your cards on cooldown however you want and don’t try to optimize them, AST is pretty simple. Just like the other three.