General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ForsakenRoe]

I agree fully with your points. I think the issue arises when some people play only specific classes, and feel excluded from particular content. They start complaining that healer X can do Y while they cannot, so then the devs feel compelled to homogenize everything so people stop complaining about "broken" classes.

Then the solution is not to homogenize things, but to give classes within the same role different things they're 'better' at within the same tier. AST was mad good for Life's Agonies because of Macrocosmos, yes, but on the flip side, WHM was amazing at Fountain of Fire. The issue being, WHM's suitability for FoF was not as obvious, as AST could handle that with Earthly Star, and if you had a SCH, Seraph Consolation/Whispering Dawn after the first tower gave the healing buff was a GG EZ. This tier, SGE/WHM have a good kit to fight the many bleeds, with Lilybell and Panhaima basically being made to counter bleed damage. But AST still has like 4 different regens it can apply, which also work well against bleed damage, and SCH can mitigate the bleed down to more manageable size ticks, so again, not as obvious as 'wow Macrocosmos literally deletes a savage mechanic!!!!!'.

Personally, my (potentially hot take) suggestion would be to knock Lilybell's CD down to 90s, and remove one charge (so it pulses 4 times instead of 5) to compensate. This would give it a 'niche' over Macrocosmos, that of 'availability'. It'd also help WHM with it's struggling OGCD count. Also, Asylum 2 charges (so you can hold one for emergency healing if needed cough UCOB) and Tetra 2 charges thanks

[Azuri]

This was something I said before as well--your "tree" is the ability to switch jobs whenever you want. AST and SCH can be looked at as two different "specs" of healer. It's just peculiar that, in a game where you can play any job you want, that there's an apparent hatred for nuance between different jobs within the same role when, if anything, FFXIV's job system creates the absolute healthiest environment for job nuance. Having situations where one job clearly has an advantage in one fight, but a different job has an advantage in another, I think, is really cool as long as the unique advantages of specific jobs are able to see fights where they are preferenced in a fairly balanced manner. AST having a clear advantage over other healers in P3S, for example, is perfectly fine and cool if the other healers (mainly WHM) could also have fights where their unique qualities also shine. As long as those mechanics are still quite doable with all other healer comps, it not only allows some jobs to feel really good in some fights, but also empowers players who have job knowledge of multiple jobs within their role.

By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit.

Or if we had more than one style of deliberately crafted content (8-man, in a regularly shaped arena, only ever one by reducing Unit A's HP to zero).

Granted, I'd gladly pay ~a third more to get those things, regardless of job diversity.

The problem is that if there isn't even the faintest ambition for gameplay diversity in the long run, then there's no point in building in diverse mechanics, let alone diverse settings (in encounter genre, form, or features).

In that way, job diversity isn't just an offshoot unlocked by making the game less stale/stagnant, but likely a necessity for making content, too, more varied. The two would probably have to arrive, and be planned for, together.

[ForsakenRoe]

By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

There's a difference between 'has an easier time with' (WHM vs AST in Fountain of Fire) and 'only one of the two choices can completely delete the mechanic' (AST vs WHM in Life's Agonies). Ideally we would have more of the former, where any class can pretty effectively handle the mechanic, but some have a tool more suited to it, such as Panhaima and Haima vs the many bleeds this tier. SCH can also complete the fight, but watching my SCH friend's prog as she handles the raidwide bleed in P8S is a far cry from my 'Physis, Kerachole, Panhaima and ignore' as SGE. Granted, this might be because she's not actually finished the prog yet, but SGE's kit seems a lot more equipped to handle 'many, smaller hits' where SCH seems more 'one big massive hit'. So the ideal fight design would be one that mixes up these two, so SGE has moments to shine, and SCH also has moments to shine. Similarly, long stretches of consistent but low damage is good for AST, with it's multiple ways to apply OGCD regens, such as Collective and Celestial Opposition. However, in situations where everyone gets smacked around a lot several times in quick succession, with not much time between for regen effects to tick (so, Inviolate Purgation as example), Lilybell's throughput helps keep the party stable even during the heavy movement.

Of course, this is all theoretical, as we all know that whichever combo of healers brings more potential damage is the one that people will insist is 'good' and the rest are trash and dead and lmao tier

[MintnHoney]

They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job.

As such a player who, essentially, chooses to main a job rather than play them all, I would like to throw a penny or two into the fountain and say that I wouldn't ever view this as punishment; however, I should think that, in lieu of everyone simply having the same tools to surpass a challenge, it would be best to enable each job to have unique tools and allow the player to construct their own way towards success. I won't specifically state whether or not I agree with the methods put forth by ty_taurus, but I will say that, if that's the goal, we're going to have to have moments where one job has it easier than the others simply because their unique abilities have a direct answer to a problem vs other jobs having indirect answers to that same problem.

Really, the actual issue is that we, as healers, currently, have 2 (maybe 3) answers to give for the 2 problems the development team spares for us, regardless of the job chosen. That would be the reason why having a job be "not the very best for a specific situation" should be "not fun" for those that aren't just wanting their job to be bestest-most-greatest job at all times: we need to be able to construct more answers.

[ty_taurus]

By Yoshida's own words, there is a significant proportion of "one trick" players in the game. They have no interest in other jobs and your proposal simply feels (and in fact is) an unfair punishment for liking the "wrong" job. Maybe if we had something more than five relevant fights once every 8 months you point would hold more merit. As it stands, waiting more than a year to have that one fight your job might be good at is not fun.

Except my example of P3S was entirely doable by all healer comps including SCH/SGE who has “bad burst healing” apparently. Sure it was harder because you don’t just have a literal undo button, but doing the first tier in PF as a healer, i cleared it as a SGE with plenty of WHMs and SCHs throughout the weeks.

If someone wants to throw a hissy fit because their job is entirely capable of clearing the fight but just isn’t the favored job of that particular encounter, that’s a them problem.