The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

Now I've slept I was gonna ask Ren if they'd be ok with WHM getting the changes I suggested back in my 'I hate the pure/barrier split' thread, that is, Dia becomes 12s duration, and Banish is added as a 15s standalone GCD.

Honestly, I think one healer - JUST one healer - should be left alone as it is. I'm not sure why that's somehow the bridge too far for people who would be getting what they want 3 times over across the other healers. I genuinely believe the game needs a healer to stay the same otherwise there are going to be a lot of alienated people. I mean, look at SAM with Kaiten or SMN with the rework or MCH with the rework in ShB (which people generally think was good but a lot of people who mained MCH were upset about) or the changes to WAR back in...uh...HW? SB? Whenever that was. Sometimes changes are major, sometimes minor, but they always upset some people. If the upset is minor (usually with minor changes), most can be relatively happy with it. If the change is more major, but there are "outs", people swap to those. But if the changes are major AND there's no option out, you lose people.

ShB did this with healers and we had a dearth of healers because of the changes to SCH and AST. While WHM's were generally happy (hard not to see why considering WHM's state in SB...ShB WAS an improvement, despite losing Aero 3), but SCHs and ASTs quit healing in large numbers. There was a bump in the number of RDM and DNC players for people that wanted something of that gameplay of being a support healer/DPS hybrid (even if you aren't really in either, it was the closest thing), and there was a crash in healer population. Given all of you guys' position on healer DPS rotations, I'd wager you remember what I'm talking about and how bad it was.

The thing is, doing the same thing in reverse would likely yield very similar results, especially since now ALL healers, not just WHMs, are used to the slimmed down DPS kits. Going cold turkey would likely cause another crash in the healer population. Forcing healers to use GCDs in P5-8S already caused a bit of a crash in healer population. I just can't see how changing all healers into support healer/DPS hybrids wouldn't cause a massive catastrophe on a similar scale.

That said, regarding this question in particular and having played a few other Jobs more this expansion, I wouldn't be as opposed to this kind of change. Thing is, that's kind of what SGE is already. Lower the CD of Plegma to 15 seconds and you basically have...that. Well, also, I'd hate Dia being 12 seconds. DoTs, as I think I told you before, are the single type of ability I hate most in all of MMOs. I'm okay with some in different kind of games - like building a full on bleed build in Remnant: From The Ashes where the DoTs heal you and all kinds of fun stuff like that - but in MMOs, I just honestly hate the things. So having to engage with a DoT more often would annoy me. And I feel having to Dia every 4 GCDs would be too constraining for cases where you DO have to cast GCD heals. Maybe 21 seconds wouldn't be terrible, but then it would drift from 1/2 min windows. Which is probably why they use 30 sec, honestly.

Leaving one healer in a sorry state is NOT compromise.

The problem is, we don't agree on what "sorry state" is. Many players think the current healing is in a fantastic state. Many others think it's in a passable/acceptable one. Until you acknowledge that it isn't a "sorry state" objectively (that's your subjective position), it's impossible for you to actually understand the problem or the solution.

And, for the record, even if you WERE correct: That would still be compromise. It would only not be a compromise if EVERYTHING you want is being rejected OR if you got everything you wanted and everything those who disagreed with you wanted was rejected - which is your proposal (ergo, your proposal is the one that is not a compromise). As it is, changing 3 healers to suit you and 1 not would absolutely be what compromise is. Not only that, it'd be a compromise weighted in your favor.

Leaving the healer skill floor as accessible as it currently is, is a very acceptable compromise, and one that I don't think any of us advocating for more complexity would argue against.

Considering one of your number has advocated for people with this skill floor to not be able to clear even Extremes and that they should quite FFXIV and go play WoW, I'm not sure you're quite right on that point...

I still can't fathom the answer to the contradiction though. If Ren 'doesn't care about parses one whit', how does the presence of an extra GCD to do damage with on WHM, tuned in such a way that you could fairly safely ignore it if you're not pushing bleeding edge content, negatively affect their gameplay?

If it were tuned that you could remove it from your bars and clear all content? Sure. But that doesn't seem to be what is being asked for. Again, Ty's posts seem to indicate otherwise, and he's not the only one with that sentiment.

Though I do acknowledge you may not be quite that strict, even you say that people wouldn't likely be able to clear Savage without it absent good Crit luck. But at least you aren't in the "quit the game" camp...so that's something.