General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[Azuri]

I mean it would shine by having more fun gameplay. RDM's gameplay is quite fun, but offers notably less DPS than BLM in exchange for Raise utility and a small amount of mitigation, but RDM players don't feel bad because all their good for is for when the party is "bad."

You can't look at utility as "well I guess all I'm good for is when other players are bad." You're exchanging DPS potential for clear security, which is extremely valuable and you should feel good about. You know how many times I've seen wipes or enrages in P7S because 3 or 4 people died during Famine's Harvest. Sure "Do the mechanics correctly" is what people should do, but the reality is they don't, and they wont.

Stop looking at raise utility as janitorial work and start looking at it for what it is: having the power to carry people through a mechanic that you can do when they can't. That's power, not weakness. It may not always be necessary, but sometimes value isn't about what you do, but what you can do, hense why RDM continues to see healthy play despite being a "prog job." It's used more than BLM is according to the evil website.

What a garbage take. And simply wrong. Ask any serious caster player - we would gladly wipe caster rez from existence. We would like to have the same balance in the role as every other role has - three comparable jobs. Not this prog caster vs BLM bullcrap.

You can shove your "you should feel good!" where the sun doesn't shine. Being good at scrubbing shitters off the floor and making people who don't deserve to clear clear isn't a fun identity. It's a joke.

[ASkellington]

You're the one who brought up giving up perfect balance for the sake of fun -- the point being, to not care only about damage, I thought? Anyway, a natural consequence of not-perfect balance is to ask where each job comes out ahead and behind.

And along those lines, "best raiser" (ty_taurus) and "doesn't depend on the party for DPS" both feel... uninspired to me. WHM gets to shine when the rest of the party is bad, basically. Yay?

I don't even know how WoW did it back when I played (WotLK-Cata) if we're comparing WHM to Holy Priest. Holy was "the easier to play healer" but afaik it wasn't completely outshined by Resto Druid and Shaman or even its other heal spec Disc Priest.

But there, and then, in WoW having big heals was valuable. Having big heals here in FFXIV when we have next to no heal checks that require it and the other healers having similar heals for free (read: no high mana cost) means nothing. If SGE didn't exist, I'd say WHM get the heal by dps treatment. But that's what SGE's identity now could be.

/shrug

If I were to completely overhaul the healers, AST would be time base/regen based, giving WHM a better heal identity of burst healer, making it the "new player; easy to learn" healer still, but that's not much. I would like for WHM to get a healer version of BLM. That'd be cool and interesting, but I have no idea how one would do that.

[ForsakenRoe]

I would like for WHM to get a healer version of BLM. That'd be cool and interesting, but I have no idea how one would do that.

By having it's Healing feed into its Damage (it does this with Lilies), and it's Damage feed into its Healing (wonder if someone made that into an idea cough cough), where BLM has it's two phases of 'fire is damage, ice is restore MP', WHM could cycle Damage into Healing into Damage into... Also if we want it to feel bursty, the simplest way is to just reduce the duration on Dia so it feels like it packs more punch in a shorter time

[ty_taurus]

What a garbage take. And simply wrong. Ask any serious caster player - we would gladly wipe caster rez from existence. We would like to have the same balance in the role as every other role has - three comparable jobs. Not this prog caster vs BLM bullcrap.

You can shove your "you should feel good!" where the sun doesn't shine. Being good at scrubbing shitters off the floor and making people who don't deserve to clear clear isn't a fun identity. It's a joke.

Fine, give your raise to me then, I'll gladly accept raise utility on DNC. Didn't realize having the ability to carry was seen as a garbage take.

[MintnHoney]

Being good at scrubbing shitters off the floor and making people who don't deserve to clear clear isn't a fun identity.

Inadvertently describing the problem with healers in FFXIV.

[Azuri]

Fine, give your raise to me then, I'll gladly accept raise utility on DNC. Didn't realize having the ability to carry was seen as a garbage take.

I wish. Plenty of MCHs and BRDs will also squeal with joy if DNC got a rez and complimentary 10% less damage. Although I doubt DNC would survive well if it approached DRK levels of dps.

Maybe combat rez should be an action you could take on any job. And which comes with that permanent 10% weakness. Then you can enjoy feeling great how well you carried Little Timmy to the clear after he failed every single mechanic. And I can play a job I enjoy without constantly dealing with this nagging feeling that I can be about 10% more useful if I played almost anything else.

[ty_taurus]

I wish. Plenty of MCHs and BRDs will also squeal with joy if DNC got a rez and complimentary 10% less damage. Although I doubt DNC would survive well if it approached DRK levels of dps.

Maybe combat rez should be an action you could take on any job. And which comes with that permanent 10% weakness. Then you can enjoy feeling great how well you carried Little Timmy to the clear after he failed every single mechanic. And I can play a job I enjoy without constantly dealing with this nagging feeling that I can be about 10% more useful if I played almost anything else.

Besides MCH who continues to get mistreated by the devs for no justifiable reason, DNC is already the lowest output DPS even after buffs.

Also, my heart goes out to all the SMNs and RDMs loosing their P8S party slot to BLM right now nearly 12 weeks after the release of this savage tier.

[ForsakenRoe]

Top 10 Allstars reports on each fight have a good spread of class diversity too, there's a couple that are lower representation than the others eg reaper, but everything appears once or more in at least one of the top 10 speedruns per fight (MCH even made it on there, at 3rd for P8 phase 1!) Tanks are mostly DRK GNB or even DRK DRK in some cases, but WAR and PLD still make the odd appearance, and healers are much the same, mostly SCH AST but the occasional WHM or SGE is in there, one run's a WHM AST comp even. Of course things could stand to be made 'more' balanced, it's a neverending process, but the way some people bang on about 'X class is trash and dead' the data just doesn't match up.

Also, if I haven't forgotten how to do maths, RDM's 6% behind BLM on it's worst comparison (looking at 99th), not 10%, which is less difference than there is between WHM and AST on IT'S worst comparison, 8% behind on P8SP2 at 99th. Caster tax might feel bad to you, but it still isn't enough to match up to whatever tax WHM's got stuck with at the minute. Despite this 'punishment' though, WHM has twice as many barses as AST. SCH and SGE are pretty even on barsecount though which is cool. Maybe 'how much damage does it do in a speedrun' isn't the be-all end-all of how good a job is after all? Maybe there's actually more to the game that the devs balance around than 'doing the same fight you already got BIS from but slightly faster'

[Semirhage]

I mean it would shine by having more fun gameplay. RDM's gameplay is quite fun, but offers notably less DPS than BLM in exchange for Raise utility and a small amount of mitigation, but RDM players don't feel bad because all their good for is for when the party is "bad."

You can't look at utility as "well I guess all I'm good for is when other players are bad." You're exchanging DPS potential for clear security, which is extremely valuable and you should feel good about. You know how many times I've seen wipes or enrages in P7S because 3 or 4 people died during Famine's Harvest. Sure "Do the mechanics correctly" is what people should do, but the reality is they don't, and they wont.

Stop looking at raise utility as janitorial work and start looking at it for what it is: having the power to carry people through a mechanic that you can do when they can't. That's power, not weakness. It may not always be necessary, but sometimes value isn't about what you do, but what you can do, hense why RDM continues to see healthy play despite being a "prog job." It's used more than BLM is according to the evil website.

RDM also has a raidbuff, an occasionally useful heal, a raid mitigation, and a gameplay loop that's actually interesting to optimize and isn't 111111111111111. Hence my point that you pay for utility with less damage. Except that's turned on its head with the healer role, where the one that sucks gets MAYBE one bit of utility, but the Wonder Twins get to have all of the utility, highest damage, and the luxury of bitching about it if they aren't literally always and forever the best at everything because being the best at everything is their "identity".

It's not that fun > balance. It's that AST and SCH define fun as meaning "I'm more powerful than my competition in every single way and now it's fun again!", then when you go "hey wait a minute", you get "you're just obsessed with numbers and parsing and not FUN like I am!"

It's maddening. You can't be the best at everything.

ETA: I also find myself unswayed by the constant argumentum ad populum about WHM. I don't think you'll like the end of the road that starts with "but WHM is so popular, so clearly numbers don't mean anything". Are you arguing that white mage, white mage is fun to play or well-designed? Get ready to keep your 1111111111 gameplay then, because that's soooooo fun.

[fulminating]

The only conclusion I can draw is sage's identity is "bad scholar" and white mage's identity is purely fashion.