General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[Semirhage]

And we can't just give WHM 'more damage than AST' because AST players will ask the justified question 'why play AST, which takes so much more effort, only to get outDPS'd by WHM?' Which is why I think, as long as WHM's within a certain performance of AST (2% at 99th would be acceptable to me), it's ok. We'll never get it perfectly matched vs AST because comp differences, crit variance, etc.

Because then you have to ask the converse of that question, which I already asked in Stormblood: "Why does AST get to bring everything to the table while WHM brings nothing?" Again. AST's "identity" can't be "good at everything", WHM's can't be "AST, but minus the cards and worse in every way even if it's by smaller percentages in some places". The only rule that makes AST forever-meta is the circular set of made-up rules that AST must - always be more complex -> always have more utility -> always be stronger because it works harder -> always be more complex -> always have more utility...

I'm just not terrifically wowed by the rehashed themes of Stormblood discussions regarding WHM's proposed niche. We spent basically a whole expansion circling around "You could get AOE shields!....but weaker than the shield healers, definitely weaker because never ever forget that Scholar needs to be more powerful than you in every single way. We definitely want to bring WHM's fun and performance factor up! Yes yes, definitely brought up. But under the good healers. Definitely still under them. Number one rule for any WHM suggestions is bring them up.... but NO buffs, that's our exclusive domain. And you can't do more damage than us; we're more complex and therefore better by definition. And also give us debuffs on our AOEs too. It's only 'homogenization' when WHM gets things other than vanilla heals and damage. It's 'good kit expansion' if we raid WHM for the last few remaining exclusive features it has."

Shadowbringers design was the logical direction for the healer landscape in a world where WHM is boxed in like that. The devs -agreed- with this overly simplistic set of design constraints. I maintain that we're stuck in this rut until this BS gets reevaluated.

If your job is only allowed to bring one thing to the table, it'd better be really good at it. BLM gets this right. If you only bring one thing to the table, but your competition shouts "but I work harder for it! Also I get to bring this other dragon hoard pile of utility that are MY exclusive domain that you can't have access to. Whoops, this confluence of mandatory premises defines me as the best at everything, fancy that!", that's also incredibly unfair.