Has anyone quit healing?

[Semirhage]

I think that you likely would be more happy playing a RDM with Vermedica, yes. But I didn't accuse you of not being a "real" healer. Nor is that "(my) actual point".

Yes you did.

You just did it there too. Apparently I'm akshuwally a DPS main masquerading as a healer, unlike you REAL healers who like spamming healing spells. If you're going to complain about me making personal attacks, don't passive-aggressively suggest that I belong in the DPS camp when I disagree with you on healer design.

I've played HEALERS in nearly every RPG, MMO or otherwise, that I've played since childhood. It IS healing. The only exception are games that have very limited spell slots/use (e.g. D&D), in which case you spend a lot of time doing the equivalent of auto-attacking.

Then I don't know which games you've been playing. Name me a single RPG where you spend the vast majority of your time on a healing class spamming health-restoring spells. I'll wait. In the classic D&D-based ones you ended up mostly healing at the end of encounters, because killing the enemy is more important than keeping everyone at 100% HP. That's how healers work. That's how the definition of efficiency works. That's not just how healing works in FFXIV, that's how healing works in every game that doesn't penalize you for being lower than max HP.

Does the term "Strawman Fallacy" mean anything to you? I believe healers should have damage and buff and debuff tools to use when healing isn't necessary. Maybe you should ask my oppinion on things instead of telling me what my opinion is?

Yeah, you also believe that WHM should play like Dia Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare when healing isn't necessary. What a variety of tools there. Bundles of fun for hours of gameplay.

Which does not require that to be DOING DAMAGE at all.

Whence comes this absolute allergy to doing damage? EW GROSS anything but DOING DAMAGE!! It's part of how every job kit works. It's in fact the most important metric in FFXIV. They could radically shift encounter design to make this no longer true, but that's highly unlikely they'd revisit the old content to change this in the already unlikely event they did it going forward.

And yet that's the main difference between EW healers and ARR healers (at least on WHM), and I've had someone here tell me that WHM in ARR was "dozens" of times more complex.

I've argued against this a bunch of times too. I've heard a thousand times "well it was never particularly complex, so why complain about it now?" Because the kit shallowness has never been a GOOD thing? Because bad design doesn't have a statute of limitations after which it magically becomes good design? Because current encounter design is exacerbating that shallowness? It was certainly more complex than EW WHM was, though not "dozens of times". Weird, it's almost like having fewer oGCDs, more DoTs, and more frequent outgoing damage made things more entertaining. But encounter design isn't the ONLY thing that caused this. The ugly stripping of the downtime kit did it too.

Those of us who call for more interesting damage kits are doing so because we see that Square likes their current beautiful-yet-unengaging-for-anyone-who-isn't-a-DPS cinematic encounter design where bosses teleport to the center of arenas, cast their spectacle attacks for a hundred years, and maybe chunk the tank a few times a fight (which they can just self-heal through). If Square wants to design encounters like this, fine. But give me something to DO. Spamming one button until my eyes roll so far back in my head I tattoo the imprint of my lashes on my brow bones isn't "something to do". It's boring as hell.

It's BAD. ENCOUNTER. DESIGN; I agree. But clearly not BAD. GAME. DESIGN.

You don't LIKE it, and I get that. But that's a different metric.

It's "clearly" not bad game design? Oh? You're the one advocating for making the other three healers interesting while keeping WHM a snoozeathon. So riddle me this: if this happens, you know there's going to be a skill gap. There's already one. And it's huge. Keeping WHM the boring crayon-eater healer while actually fixing the other three just codifies that skill gap in the job design. So what happens when someone plays WHM and gets actually good at the game? There's going to be a large gulf between the amount of downtime a skilled healer and an unskilled healer can create for themselves. Soooo...the other three healers get to be fun during their downtime, and WHM gets Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare because that's "good enough" for them? Tell them to swap to a different healer because this is the designated playpen for crappy healers? What is this refusal to consider downtime? No, don't make the downtime interesting! Anything but that!

I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it again. WHM is the only job in the game that people regularly, REGULARLY completely flip their standards for good game design and argue that being designed to play like ass on purpose is the ideal state. You argue for designing literally ANY other job in the game like it and you'll get shrieks of rage, cries of horror. Why would anyone want a gameplay loop so boring, so unrewarding, so utterly lacking in choice, so dull in downtime, such a shallow noninteractive healing kit?

[Renathras]

Yes you did.

I get that you want to make the argument about anything other than the topic at hand, but no, I didn't. I said you would probably be HAPPIER doing something else. It's not some "passive-aggressive" slight. If you enjoy dealing damage but want the option to offer some healing here and there, then you would likely be happier on a Job that functions that way. I had a friend in SB that loved healing 4 mans on RDM, so we'd que as a full party and let him. He liked dealing damage with RDM but he also liked being a healer while also being a damage dealer, which is what the RDM class fantasy is anyway.

It's not an attack on a person to note what they like doing and point out that that kind of playstyle exists in the game already. I'll also say again, I felt that was what SGE was going to be - and what I still feel it SHOULD be - but for some reason they went "DoT+spam" on it and I have no idea why.

D&D

As I noted, you spend a lot of time in (at least old) D&D doing the equivalent of Auto-Attack. Play through Baldur's Gate games as a Cleric, for example, and the VAST majority of your actions will using a slingshot. Most MMOs made around when FFXIV was made and before, healing was the full time Job. In WoW - even current WoW - healers spend far more of their time casting heals than damage spells, and most only have 2-5 damage spells, which is comparable to FFXIV's. This was even more prevalent in older MMOs like Everquest where mana was such a constraining resource and the way things mana regenration worked (and MP5 or "mana per 5 seconds" in WoW from Vanilla through at least Wrath worked similarly) that when you weren't healing or buffing, you were sitting and drinking/resting to restore mana.

This is again you overstating your case. While you can argue that SOME healers in SOME games spend a lot of time dealing damage, that's far from universally true. One doesn't even have to go far to find examples since WoW is still right there and everyone knows what Everquest is.

Yeah, you also believe that

Despite me suggesting it several times, now I'm just going to ask it outright:

When are you going to ask me what I think instead of tell me what I think?

EDIT:

Whence comes this absolute allergy to doing damage?

I hate DoTs and am a borderline pacifist irl. I enjoy healing and helping people and being a synergist, boosting and augmenting the capabilities of other people. I genuinely hate fighting and see conflict as a last resort to be avoided in general. This reflects into my gameplay style where I enjoy buffing and restoring allies, uplifting people, and keeping them on their feet as we collectively confront the challenges in front of us.

And because there are 11 DPS Jobs in this game already. If I really get the itch to beat up enemies, I have MCH, SMN, and RDM that I can play to do that. Why would I want WHM to also do that when I already have those other options?

but that's highly unlikely they'd revisit the old content to change this in the already unlikely event they did it going forward.

It boggles my mind why you people think they'd revisit/change old content - or have to - to make such a change. As I said to the other guy above, they've changed how the combat system works several times now. Not once have they ever gone back and changed old content to reflect that. ARR didn't have the absolute adherence to the 2 minute burst window we now have in 6.1 after the Trick Attack/Mug change basically unified the game around the 2 minute buff window. Tell me, which old encounters did they change to reflect this? What Crystal Tower fight has been adjusted to account for the 2 minute burst window? Which Alexander Savage tiers did they go back and change? What SB Extremes have they rebalanced around it?

When they simplified healer damage kits in ShB while loading us with even more powerful healing tools, which old encounters did they change? When they rearranged levels of learning spells, like giving WHM Solace at level 52 now, what old encounters did they alter to reflect that WHM now has this MP free Cure 2 every 30 then (20 now) seconds?

They've done this at no point in the past when they made combat system changes of any level, from minor to sweeping: Why do you guys keep insisting they'd have to retroactively make such a change now when they've literally never had to do so before?

I've argued against this a bunch of times too. Weird, it's almost like having fewer oGCDs, more DoTs, and more frequent outgoing damage made things more entertaining. But encounter design isn't the ONLY thing that caused this. The ugly stripping of the downtime kit did it too.

ONE (or two) more DoTs. Here's the problem, MY ARGUMENT is that we have too many and too powerful oGCDs (which you even noted here), and that encounter design doesn't lean into our GCD healing kits. In effect, we SOMEWHAT agree here. But my solution is to revert to what we used to have in terms of healing and your solution is to revert to what we used to have in terms of damage. Perhaps this reflects our personal philosophies towards gaming (e.g. healing vs damage - and no, this is again not some passive-aggressive slight, I just find it interesting), but whatever the case, it's interesting that we both want some of what we used to have, but different halves of it.

You want the old damage kits back, I want the hold healing kits/requirements back.

Those of us who call for more interesting damage kits are doing so because we see that Square likes their current beautiful-yet-unengaging-for-anyone-who-isn't-a-DPS cinematic encounter design where bosses teleport to the center of arenas, cast their spectacle attacks for a hundred years, and maybe chunk the tank a few times a fight (which they can just self-heal through). If Square wants to design encounters like this, fine. But give me something to DO. Spamming one button until my eyes roll so far back in my head I tattoo the imprint of my lashes on my brow bones isn't "something to do". It's boring as hell.

Which is why I've consistently said to change 3 of the healers to reflect this and leave 1 alone. Something you've roundly rejected because you seem to have an aversion to people enjoying the game if they don't like playing as you do/aren't as bored as you are.

It's "clearly" not bad game design? Oh? You're the one advocating for making the other three healers...

I'm perfectly fine with us leaving everything EXACTLY AS IT IS TODAY. I've said this before in this conversation.

However, I also want other people to be happy and have Jobs they enjoy playing. That's the reason I advocate for changing SOME healers and leaving AT LEAST ONE as-is. Something you're adamantly against because you think not having 5,000 buttons and a complex DPS rotation that you need a supercomputer to determine and that Steven Hawking would have difficulty understanding is "a snoozeathon" and anything less than your massive button bloated hotbar juggling isn't "interesting". PvP SCH has less buttons than CNJ - not WHM, CONJURER - yet is very interesting to play because of the interactions those buttons have. And it only has three DPS buttons, Broil, Biolysis, and Mummification, which is less than PvE WHM has now.

As to the skill gap, yeah, that's the option. You can play another Job or you can like the one you're on. And no, I'm not against doing things in downtime. I just don't want ALL OF THE HEALERS to be balanced around that/that downtime to be filled with complex damage abilities and management. Not everyone likes dealing damage. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to so many of you.

But how about this, let's make a deal: YOU pick the one healer that we make simple. Now, as WHM is the simplest in the game right now, if we pick a healer other than WHM, that means we'll have to simplify them to WHM's level and leave it there. You get to pick which one though. Which do you choose to sacrifice so that you can have EVERYTHING ELSE YOU WANT AND DENY IT TO ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE TO PLAY AS YOU DO?

SGE? We can get rid of Kardia and replace it with Regen, make Addersgall spenders more powerful and into GCDs that generate Toxicon after 3 uses, remove Plegma...we'd have to do a lot of general reworks of its kit, but I guess we could do it.

SCH? With the Faeries and oGCD kit, it'd be really REALLY hard to simplify it to WHM level. Though I'm all ears for you to propose how we could do it. And keep in mind, when I say WHM level, I mean the healing kit as well as the DPS kit. So replacing proactive healing with WHM's powerful but simple reactive healing.

AST? How? With the Cards/buffs alone, it would be impossible to streamline and simplify AST's playstyle to be comparable to WHM's, even with sharing much (though not all) of its GCD kit.

So which healer gets to be the simple one? Any of the other three right now are more complex than WHM and would have to be simplified to current WHM level. Which do you choose and how would you propose changing them to accommodate that just so YOU can get the other three to yourself?

That is the reason I propose WHM as the simple one - pragmatically, it's already there. It would require the least work to "simplify" as it's already as simple as it can realistically get. Historically, it's ALWAYS BEEN there.

I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it again. WHM is the only job in the game that people regularly, REGULARLY completely flip their standards for good game design and argue that being designed to play like ass on purpose is the ideal state. You argue for designing literally ANY other job in the game like it and you'll get shrieks of rage, cries of horror. Why would anyone want a gameplay loop so boring, so unrewarding, so utterly lacking in choice, so dull in downtime, such a shallow noninteractive healing kit?

Stop strawmanning and caricature and you might someday understand reality.

No one advocating for WHM's current design is saying it plays like ass.

AND AS I'VE SAID BEFORE:

No less than three Jobs (WAR for Tanks, MCH for Ranged, and SMN for Casters) plays very close to WHM's current complexity level today. That covers all roles. Meaning every role has AT LEAST ONE Job of comparable complexity already. And people love WAR and SMN (and WHM may be the most played Job in the game, but is definitely the most played healer)