What was so wrong with stormblood healers that required they be changed?

[Halfgeeek]

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

The result of this, as in every other popular MMO, is the constant "dumbing down" as time goes on.

Just look at the last WAR change, why did Upheaval need its resource cost removed? Because managing 20 points was too difficult for some. It was considered clunky.

[fulminating]

I watched a few videos from heavensward about scholar and white mage. I understand their motivation even less, surely they must be able to tell the difference between then and now, to see what they’ve inflicted on the role? HW scholar looks like it’s what they should be aspiring to, and they were already there. HW white mage is more coherent too.

Could it be any more obvious that the lead dev wants to stand in the bad and be catered to? I don’t think it’s particularly healthy that the media tour people are so sycophantic either, surely one of them could have voiced concerns?

[Sebazy]

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

I'm sorry but no, that's just not the case at least not for the major expansion changes.

You tell me who asked for WHM to get more raw healing throughput in Stormblood. Please link me one thread that suggested clicking AST's cards off be removed and that we get undraw instead.

Meanwhile: We've had threads practically begging for WHM to get some kind of raid buff pretty much since HW - Ignored.
Requests to change dissipation into something less jarring for years - Ignored.

I could go on for days with various suggestions that have gained significant traction but fallen on deaf ears.

Importantly though, there have been occasions where SE have seemingly listened to the 'vocal minority' and at least in the case of healers, it's generally worked out well:

Lilys (eventually)
Plenary
Cleric Stance
Lilies potency bump for Endwalker
SB AST launching with no way to remove cards nor click them.

Again, there's tons of examples but these are the sorts of things that people have asked for and SE have responded. For healers at least, these cases have generally worked out well even if they shouldn't have happened in the first place.

The core issue here isn't that SE are listening to the wrong people. It's just that they seem to either be oblivious to how the role actually plays in game, or they are just so understaffed that they don't have the manpower that it needs to properly flesh out and tune the role. (My assumption is the latter fyi)

[Dzian]

If I were to give my two cents on healers individually from Stormblood.

basically agree with most of this. I would say though that Asts cards could have been so much better if they were just tweaked slightly.

If TP was actually a finite resource to be managed instead of borderline infinite for example Spire would have been a much more usefull card than just aoe fodder.

the same could be said for Ewer if it actually worked.. but what it was was an mp refresh that had zero effect on blms drks or any job that could actually use it... had it actually worked it could have opened up jobs to more flexibility. extended a blms fire phase for more damage. allowed a dark to be more agressive with dark arts or whatever it was,, it could have made jobs play just a little bit more dynamicly and less rigid.

would have been much more fun..

4.0 SB healers (well most 4.0 jobs) were probably the best theyve ever been.

[Sebazy]

basically agree with most of this. I would say though that Asts cards could have been so much better if they were just tweaked slightly.

If TP was actually a finite resource to be managed instead of borderline infinite for example Spire would have been a much more usefull card than just aoe fodder.

the same could be said for Ewer if it actually worked.. but what it was was an mp refresh that had zero effect on blms drks or any job that could actually use it... had it actually worked it could have opened up jobs to more flexibility. extended a blms fire phase for more damage. allowed a dark to be more agressive with dark arts or whatever it was,, it could have made jobs play just a little bit more dynamicly and less rigid.

would have been much more fun..

4.0 healers (well most 4.0 jobs) were probably the best theyve ever been.

*4.1

4.0 SCH was arguably the worst state any job has ever been in to the extent that was pointless even in fluff content like dungeon roulettes.

[Duskane]

Healer aoe was so strong that they did more than most DPS big reason why it got gutted
Holy,assize,Aero 3
Gravity and Earthly star
bane and Miasma 3
all insane in SB

[Dzian]

*4.1

4.0 SCH was arguably the worst state any job has ever been in to the extent that was pointless even in fluff content like dungeon roulettes.

SB in general would have been a better choice than 4.0 I guess

[ForsakenRoe]

overall yeh i'd say that 'SB in general' was the peak, because on the one hand i think WAR 4.1 was the pinnacle of 'tank gameplay', but at the same time DRK got 'actually kinda playable' fixes in 4.3 like making shadow wall 120s instead of 180

and yeh, SE does seem to listen to certain crowds too hard for stuff. Like again, 4.2 WAR changes (IR now gives 5 guaranteed crit fellcleaves), because people complained that 'its not fun when you do your opener and nothing crits'. like yeh no shit, that's how openers work, sometimes you pop off and sometimes you hit like pool noodle. the constant move towards 'make stuff guaranteed to crit/dhit' to reduce crit variance is going to sterilize the fun from the game i fear, i feel nothing when i hit primal rend or fell cleave and it direct crits, because i know it's guaranteed to. but if i'm on DRK and my shadowbringer dhit-crits, or double down, or confetior, my monkey brain goes 'ooh big'.

imo we should have never have even had dhit as a stat, they should have seperated crit into crit rate and crit strength, that way they could have opened up build diversity for some classes. SB BRD procs are based on when your dots crit? 'crit rate for more procs vs crit strength for harder hitting crits but less of them' becomes a potential playstyle choice. yes some math eggs would work out that 'oh well you see if you use this build over this one you actually get 0.4% more damage on this fight' but does a game really have to be designed around that? SB SAM was great because you could build zero skillspeed or like 2800, and both builds were within like 1% of each other

oh right this is the healer section, uhh yeh i made the mistake of levelling WHM first in SB before moving on to become a tank main and getting into raiding, lilies bad, many dots on sch good, balance fishing bad but the 'fix' of making every card 'balance but crap' is not the play, #JusticeForFluidAura, healers having SB dps kits with EW healing toolkits would probably be close to the ideal situation. not perfect but we have to work with what we're potentially able to get here. any concerns about 'what about button bloat' can be solved with 'why do we need 14 tools to do 'heals in an aoe' on each healer' and some clever application of combining similar tools as upgrades. for example, why not just add medica 2's regen effect to medica 1 as a trait instead of having 2 seperate buttons? why are cure1/2 not traited upgrades? for AST, same for benefic and helios/the aspected variants. why is horoscope a skill instead of just a trait that upgrades, idk celestial opposition to also 'heal at the end of it's regen effect for 400p' would be my suggestion? assuming you dont use a GCD to power it up because that's a dps loss, horoscope heals for a measly 200 potency, its sad.

if we were given a number for each healer of 'here is how many skill slots we need to reclaim via deleting skills, combining skills, etc', i reckon i could get 4 spaces for each healer sorted easy. if we assume the devs are comfortable with the amount of buttons SAM has now, my hotbars have 32 keybinds used for SAM and role skills (LB and pot are on seperate bar to side, they wont be counted in this example as this is true for every class for me) PLD also has 33, but that includes Shield Bash. So i'll assume 32 to be the 'comfortable amount'. So:

-WHM is currently at 29 for me, meaning adding up to THREE more actions would be possible without even deleting anything else. having cure1 upgrade to cure2 at 30, and medica1 into medica2 at 50 instantly buys us two more slots, for a total of five. also can we get lower level stuff back as low level versions of current things, like divine seal > temperance, or protect > aquaveil? this would help newer players to build the habit of throwing out aquaveils at later levels

-SCH is currently at 31 for me, but the fairy summon button is off on a seperate hotbar because i click it once and it's done, no need for keybind for it. this one is a little harder to condense, but the obvious thing is to have physick upgrade to adlo. i think i'd have lustrate upgrade to excog at 66, meaning excog would have a 1sec CD. this should be fine because it's gated by aetherflow, and if someone wants to spend it all on excog, more power to em i guess. i'd also personally say it might be time to retire energy drain, as it's been kneecapped into oblivion and is such a pathetic potency, if we can get shadowflare back by sacrificing energydrain, i'm making that trade. so that'd be 3 more slots, bringing us to 28/32, meaning we can add 4 skills

-AST is at 31 too. No, Undraw is not on the bars. this one has the whole card thing to keep it busy though so im guessing SE will justify keeping this one's dps rotation a bit less stressful due to that. regardless, benefic > asp.benefic and helios > asp.helios are 2 easy slots. horoscope as a trait on something else is another. for example, change CO's regen from 5 ticks of 100 to 3 ticks of 150, and after pressing CO have the button change to a 'detonate' button like how earthly star works. Detonating the HOT while it's ticking instantly heals for the remaining amount of HOT healing. Letting the HOT expire naturally will proc the additional horoscope heal of, say, 300 (halfway between base and primed horoscope is now). we could also remove synastry if needed, but even without doing that, the 3 suggestions above would bring me down to 28 like SCH, meaning we can add 4 skills comfortably.

-SGE is at 29 like WHM, but the idea i have for it is too long for this already-an-essay post

tl:dr sorry for long i dont know how to make a collapsible quote window, but the point is, 'but the hotbar space' issue is fairly easy to solve

[ASkellington]

tl:dr sorry for long i dont know how to make a collapsible quote window, but the point is, 'but the hotbar space' issue is fairly easy to solve

I mean if we're talking about Hot bar issue for AST I can honestly say: there is nothing added in EW that I needed.

Now, that isn't to say that I hate Exaltation or Macrocosmos. I love them and would actually like to keep them. But did they needed to be added? No. (I would also like to add here Neutral Sect didn't need to be added in Shb and arugably shouldn't and the Sects should have been an in combat toggle but I am enamoured with the idea of stance dancer AST so... take this with a mountain of salt) and on that note don't know why they didn't do it anyway because isn't that technically what Kardia is for SGE?!

That said, I am more in favor of removing other skills from AST's kit to keep them because I like the theme of delayed healing they have. (regen/delayed healer if I can't have stance dance diurnal/noct)

[Deceptus]

The real problem is the devs care too much about the vocal minority, so they change things to please the "crowd", but the silent majority actually enjoy the current design.

The result of this, as in every other popular MMO, is the constant "dumbing down" as time goes on.

Just look at the last WAR change, why did Upheaval need its resource cost removed? Because managing 20 points was too difficult for some. It was considered clunky.

It wasn't clunky, it simply messed up their rotations. Wouldn't have if Heavy Swing generated 5/10 beast gauge instead of 0