General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ForsakenRoe]

accusing Ren of her favorite insult of the week

there is no insult in that post targeted at you, unless you count 'most people are idiots' as directed at you. people might be more sympathetic to your argument if you stopped playing the victim

I'm pointing out that consensus is likely not what you think it is.

the quote 'I recognize the council has made a decision, but given it is a stupid-ass decision, I have elected to ignore it' comes to mind.

no one is singing the praises of Glare and nothing else

then why do you keep campaigning for WHM to stay in the position of 'cast 150 glares in a raid encounter'? yes, 'cast glare and nothing else' taken in it's most literal sense is 'not true' because you occasionally have to press dia, and misery once per minute, and assize on CD. BUT, we all know when people say 'press glare and nothing else' it's not meant to be literal, it is a description of how it feels to play the class. The only part we remember is the Glare, because 80% of the fight is the Glare.

In the end, because you and those like you won't compromise, you get nothing.

I already said I'll let Sage be the 'idiot proof' healer with the current '150 Dosis in one fight' design. The reason I want the old healers to have complexity added back is because they USED to have complexity, back in HW and SB. New healer for Nu-Design, old healers get the old design. But there shouldnt NEED to be a compromise here, asking to have one healer left behind just doesn't make sense to a lot of us, including me. The whole 'gotta keep it simple for the newbobs' doesn't wash, because as i've said several times, there's plenty of skill expression on other classes. Again, I can clear new EX as DRG or RPR or heck MNK, because I get how the basic rotation works. But if i wanted that 99 as MNK i'd have to use some non-intuitive opener, get hella lucky in chakra procs
and crits, lock my framerate to some weird non-standard number (how do people discover this stuff), but i dont want to do any of that because i dont play monk that much, and dont care to optimise it to that level.

WHM vs WAR

1-2-path/eye means that you have to consider whether to refresh eye not 'now' but 'in 3 GCDs' when you're looking at your heavy swing. say you have 10 sec left on your gauge, and the boss leaves in 10 sec. your next step is heavy swing, what do you do? well, you could go 1-2-path instead of eye, then fill that last GCD with a fell cleave to dump, for example. Alternatively, if the boss jumps away for less than 20 seconds, you could instead choose to eye, so you have the buff on for when you refresh it AFTER the boss comes back. the 1-2 might seem like busywork on the surface, but it adds a layer of complexity that some people might not notice at first. not that i'm saying 'yeh lets add 123 combos to glaredosisbroilmalefic' cos that is a more 'physical' thing. Fellcleave is like misery in that it's your big hit that your gauge builds to, but you also have Infuriate to instantly give you a 'Misery', you can pool up to 2 so you have leeway on WHEN to dump them, Infuriate later allows you to get 'Misery but harder', Enhanced Infuriate trait means when you 'Misery', you get 'instantly gives one Misery' back sooner. Finally, IR gives you '3 Misery Stacks' and 'Super Ultra Misery (now with gapclosing effect)', and so obviously you put these inside raidbuff window, but you cant just choose to dump Rend whenever you like, because SE loves to look at 2min windows and say 'okay lets put every mechanic here', LimitCut in P2S, Act 2 in P4S, now we have the RNG of whether it's Dog or Snake first on the doorboss dictating if the 2min window falls inside the 'lmao go spread out' part of Manifold Flames or not in P8S.

To make WAR 'comparable to WHM' as you say, we'd have to rework it a bit. Path and Eye both no longer need to be preceded by HeavySwing - Maim, they are now standalone GCDs. Neither give gauge, and the only way to get FellCleave is by infuriating, once per minute. FC no longer reduces INF's cooldown. IR does not give Primal Rend, nor 3 stacks of Fellcleave, it instead lets you press Storm's Path 20% faster. Upheaval is deleted. Orogeny now does 400 potency AOE with no damage falloff, but is a 45sec CD. Your rotation is now Eye, IR, Infuriate, Path, Path, FC, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Eye refresh here probably, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Path, Pa

Does this sound fun to anyone?

Lastly, other people might say it's 'fine' but I'm one of those boomers who misses 4.1 WAR, when you had to do on-the-fly maths to balance how much gauge you had going into raidbuffs, dumping with onslaught or fellcleave as needed to go in with 100/100 without overcapping. I also miss 'DA spam' DRK but that's neither here nor there, since that class was a 'sustained damage' type and SE has now decided that everything has to burst at 2min or get left behind.

Lilies are easy to use, but you still have to avoid overcap

I'm not 100% convinced we need to avoid overcap, as far as I see it, I just need to make sure you have a Misery ready for raidbuffs. If you only need to heal twice in the 2 mins before raidbuffs come back, then it's completely fine to overcap because you use one more lily outside of raidbuffs and have Misery ready. The only benefit to 'make sure you don't overcap' is you save 400 MP per extra lily you use i guess, but at the cost of 'well now i cant adapt to someone standing in the fire unexpectedly'. Since I PF stuff, I can't rely on people playing 100% effectively (myself included), so I tend to only use the lilies when I KNOW I need to use them to get the lily prepped, and hold them the rest of the time in case something goes bad. You know, so I can 'heal' like a 'healer', instead of using the whole gauge as 'this is for damage'?

calling back to WAR though, would be nice if blood lily could stack to 2 like Infuriate so we had less risk of overcap, but i guess that'd lead to some degen play where people would try and get 2 Misery's prepped for each raidbuff instead of just 1, meaning all 6 lilies are accounted for 'damage-wise' and zero are spare for doing the actual job of healing. The Energy Drain effect again as it were

as well as using Presence of Mind at the right time

so when it comes off CD 95% of the time, and 'delayed along with everyone else's buffs if the fight design requires a delayed raidbuff window' in the other 5%. Since every job has to do that same delay, it's not exactly a 'thing that WHM has to consider', like we don't count Tactician on MCH as a 'utility MCH has' because DNC and BRD have equivalents.

and checking your Dia timer so you can refresh it at the right time without overcapping it or overwriting it too soon.

so once per 30 seconds, unless you know the boss will die within the next 15 seconds, at which point you might as well just Glare instead. Pinnacle of interactivity

You don't have to do any of this to properly play WHM, but it's still fun to manage.

no, you dont have to do any of this to play WHM, but you do to properly play it, because proper play of a class is to get as close to it's theoretical maximum damage output as possible. Or so say the barsebrains, i just hit boss and get loot. Should note, I don't properly play WHM either, but I don't like the concept of 'barse runs'. I look at it as like racing Usain Bolt in a 100m. Sure, after X number of runs, maybe he trips over his shoelaces and I beat him. Does that make me 'faster than Usain Bolt' if that's the only run that gets shown on TV to the world? Perhaps like most of my analogies, it doesn't make sense to others, or it is flawed in some way. But like barsing, I also just dont care. Whatever I get in the weekly reclears, that's my barse. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but I feel that's a more 'true' representation than a group that does the fight over and over and over and only uploads the runs where they got 99s

Heavy Swing - Maim - Storm's Path is Glare with extra busywork that adds nothing to the experience.

as above, what one person considers 'extra busywork', others might see as 'subtle nuance with room for skill expression'. I'll tell you what IS busywork though: Pressing Glare 150 times in a fight, interspersed with a DOT that totals up to 'about 2 Glares of damage lmao'

Or, put another way, when was the last time you seriously messed up the 1-2 in your 1-2-3 rotation? I can count the instances of doing that on probably one hand.

So we should remove all instances of 1-2? IE from the DPS too? I'm sure NIN will enjoy pressing Aeolian Edge 12 times in a row, only to then press Armor Crush once every 30s to refresh their Huton. Or DRG pressing Heaven's Thrust 12 times, interspersed with once-per-30s Chaos Thrust to refresh the dot. Wait, I'm getting this weird sense of deja vu...

I don't want Fluid Aura (which at this point is thematically pointless for WHM AND would just be a second Assize taking up an additional hotbar space for no good reason) OR Aero 3.

In order:
-'thematically pointless' is addressed by changing it's VFX and name at 72 along with the rest of the stuff that turns into lightshows (Literally just reuse the VFX for Lost Banish, job done)

-you say 'second assize' like we didnt just get Aquaveil/Exaltation/Protraction at 86, which I have to remind myself to use because they're pretty surplus to requirements. Admittedly, this tier Aquaveil gets a bit more use because of bleed TBs and how they snapshot, but I'm not expecting SE to keep that design because 'tier hits too hard, healers quit en masse'. In fact, since it's just busywork to press a 'second assize', would that mean you'd get rid of 'first assize' if you could? we only press it for damage anyway, so they could remove the damage potency from it and bump glare by 10 potency to compensate, leaving assize as a healing only tool. god that sounds awful why did i even think of this, its cursed

-what's wrong with aero 3? the VFX dont match the current theme of WHM? (lost banish 3 is an aoe, just saying), the fact it's an extra dot to manage? it taking extra hotbar space? (as it stands, WHM is 4 buttons behind compared to some other classes, but those classes IMO need a prune, like SAM, why tf is shoha and shoha2 seperate? why do we need ikishoten to give 50 when we can just have guren and senei give 25 and get the same effect?) complaining about 'extra dot' is literally begging for the 'skill issue' response, but instead we could retool the way the ability works, since SE apparently wants to remove dots from classes (except PLD and GNB who need to keep 2 for reasons). Knowing SE though, their 'retool' would be 'its Misery, but at a lower level and does less damage lmao'. As for hotbar space, well there's a few things that could be done to alleviate hotbar issues anyway, like UPGRADE CURE 1 INTO CURE 2, AND UPGRADE MEDICA 1 INTO MEDICA 2 . wow there's the 2 buttons we'd need for fluid aura/water/banish, and for aero 3's glorious return, hotbar problem solved.

Though I wouldn't mind a thundercloud-like proc for Dia, the problem is healers don't work well with proc based effects when things get busy, and as someone said earlier, that only sounds fun until people seeing wild swings in their parses based on weather they got good or bad RNG on the procs.

we already have wild swings in barses based on any number of things. someone gets hit by a mechanic? barse affected because we have to potentially divert resources to keeping them alive. someone DIES? barse ruined cos we drop a GCD to res them (and the killtime gets scuffed). didnt crit misery inside raidbuffs? barse ruined because the only thing that seems to matter in 2022 barsing is 'did your raidbuff window pop off'. did you get bad luck on AST cards while trying to barse on AST? barse ruined, hope you enjoy those Ladys, i sure love overheal!

designing around 'what is good for barsing' is the quickest path to a bland and sterile game. 'if everyone's able to get a good barse, noone will have a good barse' - syndrome from incredible movie probably idk i watched it like years ago

the Devs are likely to just continue what they're doing since the majority of the community seems to like easier healers and the people that don't won't actually compromise on the point.

diluting the 'WHM player count in raids' down to 'they play it because they like easier healers' is kinda reductive, there's plenty of reasons people play certain classes over others. I play Sage over SCH because I like the way Panhaima works, and how Kerachole sticks to allies instead of being a ground AOE. I don't care if it's 200 dps behind SCH because a clear's a clear in my book. I am a WHM main because I don't like pressing all the stuff AST has to in it's burst window. Lots of people moved off of AST this tier and onto WHM, because of how much work you have to put into AST to get the same results as a WHM who does a fraction of the effort, which frees up brainspace to focus on the mechanics more. This doesn't mean they're suddenly WHM mains, or that they now hate AST, or they 'prefer easier healers', they made a conscious decision for the sake of their group, to play one class for an advantage it has over another. Heck, I did it last tier even, I'd mainly play AST in P3S despite being a WHM main, because I ain't dealing with that Life's Agonies crap with cure3 spam when I can just throw out a macrocosmos as AST and call it a day. That didn't suddenly mean 'oh Sam's an AST main now'

that also doesn't include the fact that 'easier' vs 'harder' is subjective. idk maybe someone who's been a diehard AST main for so long might find WHM 'clunky' because they're used to being able to heal with OGCDs, and being locked to the 2.5 timer to heal might catch them out a bit at first. only at the literal first though, because i assume they'd realise after that first mistake 'oh right, WHM's stuck in 2010 class design mode' and adjust. but anyway, looking at forbidden stats on forbidden website says that more people have cleared P5S as GNB than as WAR. is GNB the 'easier class' because of this? some would say yes, some would say no. I'd say it doesn't matter, and those people play GNB for whatever reason they hold, more damage, aesthetic, preference in how the mitigation works, yadda yadda.

people won't compromise on the point of 'community prefers easier healers' because A: correlation =/= causation, you can't just look at data saying 'WHM most played' and draw a definite conclusion, and B: the data we DO have is a very small subset of said community. Not everyone raids, and of those, not everyone has the log uploaded. Yeh, for the most part it's better to design the class's 'theoretical maximum performance' around those who are able to push that max performance, but it's also a good idea to design the 'just picked up the job rock, what does this button do' experience to be quite intuitive and easy to understand. WHM has the latter down pretty well, due to being a pure healer. HP goes down, press cure 2, HP bar go up. the issue is when you hit the limit of skill expression on the job, which is kinda fast. there's no more growth to be done. We're like those watermelons people grow in jars to make them square shaped and such. Keep growing us in a jar if you really have to, but can we at least make it a funny shaped jar so we're not all square? can we have some of us be like, cone shaped watermelons? or a cylinder shaped watermelon? or if funny shapes are out, can we have a bigger jar, so the people who want to 'grow' can have more room to, and the people who dont feel inclined to grow for whatever reason they hold can stay as a tiny melon that doesnt fill the whole jar that's fine too

Is his view any better though?

i think this just proves the real point, the whole topic is exceptionally polarizing in both directions, and there is no real middle ground to be had here. either you are for, or against 'more complexity in healer's dps rotations', you're either for, or against 'more healing required in encounters'. his 'raid will be impossible' is pretty funny though because he seems to be under the impression that people are asking for like 20 button rotations like actual DPS (at least how he sounds on first watching, to my ear). Like if we had Ren's 123 before Glare, that doesn't really change the fact I'm looking for an opportunity to press a not-healing GCD, and filling it with a damaging GCD. The same priority will apply in either case of 'is the party going to die if I blow this GCD on damage?' and if they are going to live, I'm going to Glare. or 'Glare - Glara - Glarega' as the case might be in the 123 world. 'mitigate for the first time properly' isnt really the point he thinks it is either, because i've seen some people who didnt mitigate in Asphodelos either. ive seen people not mitigate here in Abyssos, despite our 150Glare rotation. If a Sage player cant work out how to mitigate now, when we have 1 nuke, 1 dot, and phlegma, that's one thing. But if enough people were to think they're hotshots, go into raid as a Sage, get slapped and complain 'this too hard' cos they dont mitigate, should SE capitulate to them because they're 'the community consensus'? is it as simple as 'majority rule' when it comes to changes in class design?

this is part of the reason 'influencers' are a terrible idea, they dont influence the company, they just influence their viewerbase, and oftentimes, that means that an influencer's opinions are just echoed by the base. Worse, the fact the influencer IS an influencer convinces some people that they must be 'right', and that galvanises their opinions and makes them double down on it. People tend to latch onto the first opinion they form and it takes a lot of effort to change it, look how long it took for Mr Happy to shift the reputation of his guides being crap because they outright skipped over mechanics (because it was HW and his groups DPS was good enough to force phase pushes). bringing up the name MTQ STILL gets an occasional 'clear the fight before making a guide for it KEKW' because of that one time in Deltascape. If the influencers who went to the media tours were able to affect any real change on the direction of the design, this whole issue wouldnt even exist, because the amount of times Yoshi-P's been hit by the 'healers have nothing to heal, and the DPS rotation isn't very fun after a while, any changes?' would be enough for most people to take a hint that maybe, just maybe, there's nothing to heal and the DPS rotation isnt very fun after a while. But not SE, apparently.

Apparently the solution was under our noses all along, 'go play ultimate'. well i haven't done the newest one, but i can't imagine it's going to suddenly be some insane jump up from on-content TEA level of healing needed (because we'd run out of MP), and looking back at my TEA runs, it looks like i have (on this one im looking at) around 75 total healing GCDs (including the esunas for throttle), and 154 Glares. so not including any other damage GCD, just Glare, we're already at 66ish% 'fight is this full of DPS spell'. and the best/worst/ironic part of this? this was my 'best run', where I got a 40. imagine how many medica's were shaved out, how many better Asylum's to cover it, how many more GLARES better players than me are able to fit in instead of all my panic overhealing? 'Go play ultimate' is probably the real 'reason' a lot of healers quit, not the damage, not the 1 button spam, but the outright dismissal of any concerns about the design direction with 'lmao try harder stuff then'. Many of the people who have these complaints about the design DO do that harder stuff, what do they do now, go to Yoshi-P at fanfest and say 'yeh so you said do ultimate. So i did, and i'm still pressing Glare over and over. what gives?' is SE going to add an even harder difficulty above Ultimate, to really shut up those people who dare question the genius design of '111111111111112111111111111112'? or would it not be the simpler solution (that occam's razor thing that was mentioned before) to just make the current stuff more engaging by adding a couple more buttons?