It is not possible to play without doing dps as healer? every day i find someone...

[Tint]

A 10% damage reduction (that I can toss on newbs while questing to be friendly) certainly sounds much more useful and fun to me than 'remember to mash this oGCD on cooldown'.

That never was actually a thing. Protect could only be used on party members and people did not invited people to their party just to give them the buff.

However, I miss Protect and the moment at the start of a dungeon when everyone was waiting for the buff to be applied. Was a little sense of group bonding.

--------

Hoooowever on the topic itself:


I have a similar problem with my left hand. Playing a DD and keeping the GCD rolling is difficult for me. I played for years with no issue and had to stop almost a year ago. But the hand is not getting any better and I miss the game and my friends, so I started to play again and hope I can get along as a healer.

I actually have written some macros which will hopefully help me out with the Glare spam. Of course I know macros are bad for dpsing, but maybe not in the case of a damaged hand.

[ty_taurus]

That never was actually a thing. Protect could only be used on party members and people did not invited people to their party just to give them the buff.

However, I miss Protect and the moment at the start of a dungeon when everyone was waiting for the buff to be applied. Was a little sense of group bonding.

Healers have lost a lot of things from the transition into Shadowbringers, but I think we get too caught up on the smaller things that really didn't matter. Protect was not a tool that added substance to healer gameplay. The most you really did with it was remember to reapply it on a raised party member, but the idea of a 30 minute buff that's designed to always exist on the party may as well not exist at all. If you have a race where every player gets a handicap where they start 10% closer to the finish line, then it's not a handicap. All you did was move the start line forward. If it were something that healers had to be cognizant of in order to maintain on the party through some type of gameplay interaction, that would be a different story. But set it, forget it is not meaningful gameplay.

I think we're largely fond of the old healers because they had meaningful gameplay loops. They had more DPS tools, more mitigation, more utility, and that's what we miss. Things like Protect and old Cleric Stance may have been there too, but they're not what made healing fun, and they're not what we're ultimately longing for.

[vetch]

Healers have lost a lot of things from the transition into Shadowbringers, but I think we get too caught up on the smaller things that really didn't matter. Protect was not a tool that added substance to healer gameplay. The most you really did with it was remember to reapply it on a raised party member, but the idea of a 30 minute buff that's designed to always exist on the party may as well not exist at all.

You're speaking your own opinions as if they're objective truths and acting like you know what should matter to other people. Would you suggest that, as a 'set-and-forget' ability, Eos/Selene should be deleted despite how much people love her and replaced with an automatic SCH regen pulse? It'd be 99% identical apart from the aesthetic and the single button press, so you'd be on board with it, right?

I think we're largely fond of the old healers because they had meaningful gameplay loops. They had more DPS tools, more mitigation, more utility, and that's what we miss. Things like Protect and old Cleric Stance may have been there too, but they're not what made healing fun, and they're not what we're ultimately longing for.

The person you're responding to literally just told you why they liked Protect and it was none of the reasons you gave.

[ty_taurus]

You're speaking your own opinions as if they're objective truths and acting like you know what should matter to other people. Would you suggest that, as a 'set-and-forget' ability, Eos/Selene should be deleted despite how much people love her and replaced with an automatic SCH regen pulse? It'd be 99% identical apart from the aesthetic and the single button press, so you'd be on board with it, right?



The person you're responding to literally just told you why they liked Protect and it was none of the reasons you gave.

I mean feel free to put words in my mouth. That's how an effective conversation goes, right? That's good discussion etiquette.

EDIT: Fine, I'll actually respond. I imagine you probably care a negative amount given how abrasive your response is, but there are good discussion points to go over so whatever. First and foremost, I was not so much trying to respond to her directly and instead was using her comment as a jumping off point to address something that I think is important. A lot of us think back to pre-ShB healers quite fondly, and for good reasons. The healers from before ShB had flaws, but overall had far more satisfying gameplay loops and decisions to make, and discussing why those iterations of each healer were well-liked (except WHM for SB at least) is important to help communicate what our community wants from the healer role. That said, I think that generally, those of us who praise the older versions of each healer have a tendency to see the forest and not the trees and sort of lump all aspects of those healers together as equally important in what made those healers fun to play. In this example, lumping old Protect back with other aspects like SCH having DPS buttons, or AST's old card system, but I don't believe old Protect had really anything to do with old healer engagement. It's more the idea of having more forms of mitigation and utility rather than the button that, in a perfect world, you press once and never again.

If we were to return Protect and JUST Protect, for example, it would do approximately nothing to improve the current healer situation and really just make getting KOed marginally more punishing. If you were to return SCH's Miasma and Shadowflare and JUST Miasma and Shadowflare, that would immediately improve the experience of playing SCH in a more quantifying way. Why I think this is an important discerption to make is because in the microscopic chance that this feedback makes to so someone with even a modicum of power, I don't want them to think something like "oh if we just return Protect, the healers will be happy." It's really difficult to try and please us as a whole because we constantly bicker and clash on these tiny details, and I feel it's important to point out what was and was not actually effective at creating a better healer experience in the old days.

In regards to Eos and Selene, you're comparing apples to oranges. Embrace may be a set-it-forget-it type of action, but the concept of having different pets that enabled different actions made the old faeries far more engaging because you had the power of choice. That choice wasn't always well-balanced and I do think having Selene be different would require a different set of tools than the SB Selene tools, but that would make your faerie pet much better once again. The issues with old Selene though were that attack speed is just a bad buff that many jobs do not want you to give them. Changing that to a raw damage buff or a crit buff would be much better, though it makes Selene the blatantly superior pet and that's a problem. AoE Esuna would be a really cool and interesting form of utility if SE ever actually had fights debuff us, but there tend to be less fights that inflict debuffs than there are patches per expansion, so while it's a good concept, it doesn't really work in this world where SE's combat designers don't believe in cleansable debuffs. I'd say maybe giving Eos more healing power and Selene something like Expedient so that you have the choice of healing power or utility could be more balanced.

[Sani2341]

Would you suggest that, as a 'set-and-forget' ability, Eos/Selene should be deleted despite how much people love her and replaced with an automatic SCH regen pulse? It'd be 99% identical apart from the aesthetic and the single button press, so you'd be on board with it, right?

TBH, yeah, having the fairy be around permanently would be nice, esp. if she'd be automatically summoned again after a rezz.
Back in the good old days, there was an actual reason for having two summon fairy skills, as they both had different abilites, and thus there was a potential reason to switch between them mid fight.

These days, it's just another tax for SCH's biting it/punishment for being unattentive after changing to the job. There is absolutely no reason not to ahve the fairy out, and the only reason to switch between fairies for SCH is cosmetics, which SE solved long ago for SMN and ACN.

So yes, turning the fairy from a pet you need to summon every dang time or be locked out of half your kit into a pet that's there all the time you have a SCH job stone equiped would be a massive QoL improvement for SCH.

[vetch]

I mean feel free to put words in my mouth. That's how an effective conversation goes, right? That's good discussion etiquette.

Ok. You presume to speak for others about what you think they should want from the game and get upset that someone else speaks for you. Alright.

EDIT: Fine, I'll actually respond. I imagine you probably care a negative amount given how abrasive your response is, but there are good discussion points to go over so whatever. First and foremost, I was not so much trying to respond to her directly and instead was using her comment as a jumping off point to address something that I think is important. A lot of us think back to pre-ShB healers quite fondly, and for good reasons. The healers from before ShB had flaws, but overall had far more satisfying gameplay loops and decisions to make, and discussing why those iterations of each healer were well-liked (except WHM for SB at least) is important to help communicate what our community wants from the healer role. That said, I think that generally, those of us who praise the older versions of each healer have a tendency to see the forest and not the trees and sort of lump all aspects of those healers together as equally important in what made those healers fun to play. In this example, lumping old Protect back with other aspects like SCH having DPS buttons, or AST's old card system, but I don't believe old Protect had really anything to do with old healer engagement. It's more the idea of having more forms of mitigation and utility rather than the button that, in a perfect world, you press once and never again.

If we were to return Protect and JUST Protect, for example, it would do approximately nothing to improve the current healer situation and really just make getting KOed marginally more punishing. If you were to return SCH's Miasma and Shadowflare and JUST Miasma and Shadowflare, that would immediately improve the experience of playing SCH in a more quantifying way.

But, again, the person you had responded to told you why she liked Protect: for the small group bonding moment at the start. Interpreting other peoples' comments as a jumping-off point to find common ground has to start with actually listening to other people. You can't just assume everyone likes what you like and go from there. You especially can't do it when they've already directly counter-indicated it.

Speaking for myself, I like long-duration buffs because 1) I like buffs for flavor, 2) in other games I've played they could be shared with strangers to be friendly, and 3) they shift some of the prepwork and reduce the overall cognitive load during combat. I have repeatedly said as much.

And yet somehow in interpreting what "our community" wants for healers, you arrive at "I don't believe old Protect had really anything to do with old healer engagement. It's more the idea of having more forms of mitigation and utility rather than the button that, in a perfect world, you press once and never again.", a summation which completely reverses and obliterates my stated position and substitutes your own desires in place of it.

If I seem to be irritated with you, it's because I'm irritated with you.

Why I think this is an important discerption to make is because in the microscopic chance that this feedback makes to so someone with even a modicum of power, I don't want them to think something like "oh if we just return Protect, the healers will be happy." It's really difficult to try and please us as a whole because we constantly bicker and clash on these tiny details, and I feel it's important to point out what was and was not actually effective at creating a better healer experience in the old days.

You feel it's important for you to speak for everyone so that on the off-chance a developer listens to the forum, they'll listen to you and not, say, someone who enjoys buffs because they offer a little bit of group bonding or because they reduce combat APM slightly.

In regards to Eos and Selene, you're comparing apples to oranges. Embrace may be a set-it-forget-it type of action, but the concept of having different pets that enabled different actions made the old faeries far more engaging because you had the power of choice. That choice wasn't always well-balanced and I do think having Selene be different would require a different set of tools than the SB Selene tools, but that would make your faerie pet much better once again. The issues with old Selene though were that attack speed is just a bad buff that many jobs do not want you to give them. Changing that to a raw damage buff or a crit buff would be much better, though it makes Selene the blatantly superior pet and that's a problem. AoE Esuna would be a really cool and interesting form of utility if SE ever actually had fights debuff us, but there tend to be less fights that inflict debuffs than there are patches per expansion, so while it's a good concept, it doesn't really work in this world where SE's combat designers don't believe in cleansable debuffs. I'd say maybe giving Eos more healing power and Selene something like Expedient so that you have the choice of healing power or utility could be more balanced.

I compared Eoselene as she exists now, as a single-purpose regen pulse aura, to Protect, a single-purpose mitigation tool. That's apples to apples. But let's set that aside, because the old fairies are an interesting topic in their own right.

I would rather Selene be fed messily to a crab than see her old form brought back just to be given the Balance Jr. treatment that has lobotomized every other DPS buff in the game. In terms of game feel, it's deplorable that the only desirable substats anymore are crit, crit-but-worse, and potency. It's creatively bankrupt. Overall, and not just in the case of deciding what to do with Selene, I would rather the developers design systems that actually support more variety of gearing choices.

I wasn't here when TP was around, but I've read about it, and I think it's a bit tragic that TP went away and speed builds became almost viable... only to be shut out again by the ascendancy of the burst window wherein cooldown slippage is regarded as one of the worst sins you can commit and consequently skillspeed is once again roughly as popular as intestinal flu. This is not to say that Selene must have a speed buff to please me, only that she mustn't have a boring, same-y crit/potency buff.

As for AoE Esuna, I feel like it runs into the problem where, if so many important debuffs are going out at once that you actually benefit from having an AoE Esuna over the regular kind, it would make SCH a strongly-preferred job for those fights, and I think that's something the devs want to avoid, isn't it? (Not that I agree with that stance of theirs.)

So yes, turning the fairy from a pet you need to summon every dang time or be locked out of half your kit into a pet that's there all the time you have a SCH job stone equiped would be a massive QoL improvement for SCH.

That's not what I said. I suggested deleting her visually and replacing with a regen pulse aura as a purposely unpalatable example because I was arguing a point about job feel being important. Actually removing the cute beloved fairies would have a major negative effect on Scholar players because despite it being a mechanical QoL gain to do so, a lot players love the feeling having a fairy follower brings to the job. Likewise with the loss of Protect buffs to the people who liked them.

[ty_taurus]

Ok. You presume to speak for others about what you think they should want from the game and get upset that someone else speaks for you. Alright.



But, again, the person you had responded to told you why she liked Protect: for the small group bonding moment at the start. Interpreting other peoples' comments as a jumping-off point to find common ground has to start with actually listening to other people. You can't just assume everyone likes what you like and go from there. You especially can't do it when they've already directly counter-indicated it.

Speaking for myself, I like long-duration buffs because 1) I like buffs for flavor, 2) in other games I've played they could be shared with strangers to be friendly, and 3) they shift some of the prepwork and reduce the overall cognitive load during combat. I have repeatedly said as much.

And yet somehow in interpreting what "our community" wants for healers, you arrive at "I don't believe old Protect had really anything to do with old healer engagement. It's more the idea of having more forms of mitigation and utility rather than the button that, in a perfect world, you press once and never again.", a summation which completely reverses and obliterates my stated position and substitutes your own desires in place of it.

If I seem to be irritated with you, it's because I'm irritated with you.



You feel it's important for you to speak for everyone so that on the off-chance a developer listens to the forum, they'll listen to you and not, say, someone who enjoys buffs because they offer a little bit of group bonding or because they reduce combat APM slightly.

Look, at the end of the day, I did not tell anyone how they're supposed to feel or how they feel. I didn't tell the person whom I was originally commenting on that she isn't allowed to liked Protect. All I said was, when people wax poetic about old mechanics like protect, I do not genuinely believe those tools are what actually let to their positive experience whether they were aware of that or not. That is not me putting words in other peoples' mouths. That is me giving my opinion on what I believe is going on in those conversations. It's no different than me saying something like I don't believe most people who eat at McDonalds are doing it because they enjoy the food. I think they do it because it's fast, convenient, and cheap. I cannot speak for literally every McDonalds consumer, I'm just giving my opinion on why I think people choose McDonalds over other options.

i.e. I don't think when most people wax poetic about protect, that it was actually protect that they enjoyed. I think it was everything else about healer gameplay they enjoyed and protect just happened to be there too.

I will say, it doesn't seem like anyone's agreeing with your stance on the matter, so take that with a grain of salt, I suppose.

[T-Owl]

Ok. You presume to speak for others about what you think they should want from the game and get upset that someone else speaks for you. Alright.



But, again, the person you had responded to told you why she liked Protect: for the small group bonding moment at the start. Interpreting other peoples' comments as a jumping-off point to find common ground has to start with actually listening to other people. You can't just assume everyone likes what you like and go from there. You especially can't do it when they've already directly counter-indicated it.

Speaking for myself, I like long-duration buffs because 1) I like buffs for flavor, 2) in other games I've played they could be shared with strangers to be friendly, and 3) they shift some of the prepwork and reduce the overall cognitive load during combat. I have repeatedly said as much.

And yet somehow in interpreting what "our community" wants for healers, you arrive at "I don't believe old Protect had really anything to do with old healer engagement. It's more the idea of having more forms of mitigation and utility rather than the button that, in a perfect world, you press once and never again.", a summation which completely reverses and obliterates my stated position and substitutes your own desires in place of it.

If I seem to be irritated with you, it's because I'm irritated with you.

If I can say something, buffs are certainly nice flavor abilities, but if we are honest and stop to indulge in Sylphie Fantasies of your team mates being your nakama now that you cast protect on them, when in reality in most cases random players will be indifferent to their healer at best or actively resent them in the case of them not pulling their weight in damage and letting themselves be carried because they are a cute little healer that can only nuture never harm tihihi, the only buffs with flavor in this game are group dps cooldowns. The only proper long duration buff in this game had been protect, which was just a default skill that forced everyone in the party to wait at the start of a dungeon until the healer bothers to cast it. Buffs in game like oldschool mmos like old WoW were nice because each class had their own, so it wasn't something you had by default but something optional that dependet on your party, which could be either useful or not, with Paladin in particular offering unique buffs depending on your role. You also had the element of open world gameplay back in the day, where you would level up or at max level do daylies in the world. Here again, outside of doing hunts or treasure maps, which you usually do coordinated through linkshell or party finder, there isn't usually much to do in the open world. Fates aren't that rewarding when you level up and outside of running from point a to point b, there isn't much to do in the open world.

[Absurdity]

Would you suggest that, as a 'set-and-forget' ability, Eos/Selene should be deleted despite how much people love her and replaced with an automatic SCH regen pulse? It'd be 99% identical apart from the aesthetic and the single button press, so you'd be on board with it, right?

Short answer: Yes.


Long answer: Since they removed the only useful features from the fairy with ShB, the ability to use any fairy ability at any time regardless of your own GCD, the ability to put barriers on your fairy and deploy from it and the ability to force Embrace on a target of your choosing, I would absolutely be fine with getting rid of it.

These features atleast gave the fairy it's own unique interactions, now you're literally just getting "aesthetics" in exchange for bad gameplay and heals that only do 75% of what the tooltip says.



The fairy is now nothing more than an oGCD but clunkier, even after the slight improvements to it's AI in EW. You could turn every ability into an oGCD for the Scholar and it would improve the gameplay.

As for Embrace, you could just make it Kardia but instead of needing to dps for the heal it would be an infinite regen, on a target of your choosing, that heals for 135 cure potency (or 180 potency since we finally stop paying a fairy tax) every 3 seconds.

[Rilifane]

Short answer: Yes.


Long answer: Since they removed the only useful features from the fairy with ShB, the ability to use any fairy ability at any time regardless of your own GCD, the ability to put barriers on your fairy and deploy from it and the ability to force Embrace on a target of your choosing, I would absolutely be fine with getting rid of it.

These features atleast gave the fairy it's own unique interactions, now you're literally just getting "aesthetics" in exchange for bad gameplay and heals that only do 75% of what the tooltip says.



The fairy is now nothing more than an oGCD but clunkier, even after the slight improvements to it's AI in EW. You could turn every ability into an oGCD for the Scholar and it would improve the gameplay.

As for Embrace, you could just make it Kardia but instead of needing to dps for the heal it would be an infinite regen, on a target of your choosing, that heals for 135 cure potency (or 180 potency since we finally stop paying a fairy tax) every 3 seconds.

Have to disagree there that it would only be an improvement.
Fairy placement offers a unique advantage during light party/ pair/ spread mechanics that you wouldn't have if all heals were centered on the SCH. Things like placing Seraph mid during arrows on p2s, FoF on p3s and CC on p4s is so much better than other tools, same for light party splits on p5s.