My take on the simplicity of healers and the healer problem

[Avoidy]

I talk to people about this stuff all the time when applicable and have never been reported.

Same, but I feel like I'm treading on eggshells whenever I do it.

The silly thing is that the ToS is extremely vague when it tells us that things like "forcing a playstyle" are bad, and people who get sent to GM jail aren't even told what they said or did to warrant it, so there's no way to set precedent or properly gauge what's acceptable and what isn't. When they did list some examples of things you shouldn't say, during the ToS changes, one of the phrases was essentially telling someone "it's your fault we wiped," which is just an objective statement of truth depending on the context. If someone didn't do a mechanic properly and you wipe because of that, are you not allowed to just say what happened? It would seem not, because pinning blame where it belongs might hurt someone's feelings. They would rather we bang our heads against the wall until the cause of our wipes leaves on his own, I suppose. And then there's the fact that actually reporting someone for non-RMT is a pain in the ass and most people don't even know how to begin doing it, so plenty of people might have wanted to report us for our critique of their play but were too lazy to go through the process.

All of this doubt would go away if GMs just told people in the gaol what they said that landed them there. Then we could finally get documentation and precedent, and we could begin gauging what was actually okay to say. Until then, people who get gaol'd will continue to not know why, and people who want to provide criticism will have to get their comments approved by HR first. In all the other MMOs I've played, I was able to just address bad play in the moment, quickly, without thinking about any of this stuff, but in this game I have to first ask myself if speaking up is even worth it, and then I word my response to this guy like I'm talking to the world's most volatile Karen, and basically hope that they don't take it the wrong way and give me my first warning for fOrcInG a PlAysTyLe. Frankly, I'm not feeling it anymore, so I just do roulettes with friends so when they forget their stance I can just say "stance" instead of some longer politer version of it. And when they pull small and I'm healing, I can just say "you can pull more if you want bro" without worrying about it later.

idk a lot of this is like "you probably won't get punished for it, but the opening is there for it to happen" and that's enough to worry most people.

[TaleraRistain]

WHM:
1. A party wide shielding ability. - AST has shield, SCH/SGE have regen abilities, so I don't see why not.

Used to have one. RIP Stoneskin 2.

[Jamini]

How about Square just leaves SCH alone and doesn't touch it until they start giving us good reworks on classes that need it?

There's more than a few people that enjoy Scholar exactly as it is, and we don't need another NuSMN change that guts the class for people who aren't presently playing... for people who won't main it even after the change anyway.

If anything, other healers should get more tradeoffs and soft kit-lockout Rather than the opposite.

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The difference between a Bad Scholar, a Good Scholar, and a Great Scholar is how well you leverage risk vs reward gameplay. Knowing when to hold or use Aetherflow is one of these (A tighter mit plan means you get directly rewarded with more damage, wasting Aetherflow and then later needing to use A GCD heal because you can't use your Aetherflow to heal is a massive loss. This is Good Design), Planning out mutually exclusive abilities like Dissipation, Seraph, Fae Illumination, Whispering Dawn, and Fae Blessing adds to the skill cap of the class in a good way. It rewards players who know how the kit interacts and allows for actual skill expression that SGE and WHM simply lack without disproportionately harming less capable Scholars (as we still have other tools to heal, they are just sub-optimal and result in lower group damage)

All Scholar needs is:

1. Removal of Fae Gauge completely. Fae Union, while useful in a handful of situations, ultimately could be flat removed without 95% of the player-base giving a damn. If it can't be removed for whatever reason, just make it last 30s on a 60s cooldown and have two charges or something.
2. Some difference between Eos and Selene. (Personally I'd say restore Cleric Stance for all healers, and make Selene our version of Cleric Stance. It would be very cool if Selene gave a mild haste and movespeed buff, but had notably weaker auto-healing.)
3. Scholar - Specific Egi Glamours. Let us unlock Porxies, Pixies, Titania, Mini-Fenrirs, Alpha puppets, and anything else you can think of for a supporting pet. Quite a few people would happily open their wallets to be able to customize their faeries... so why can't we do it already? Model swapping is very basic.

[elioaiko]

I don't wanna say you're preaching to the choir but you kind of are. But nonetheless, we need them to know even if that just ignore it.

To be frank, the dev team has been lacking creatively for a long time now and they're making questionable changes to jobs that have turned them into shells of what they used to be or could have been.

Tanks and healers have been affected by this for the longest time and no one batted an eye since the majority of players are dps that they cater to the most. I mean look how long it took for them to add a new healer.

And then look at the forums, "x job is a copy paste x job" or "the job is no longer fun". Since the game has gotten more popular over the years, the devs have been slowly but surely making the game more "easy" or accessible to players of all skill levels. This in turns hurts the job's potential because they deem certain jobs as "starter" for the new players to get used to. And Ofc all jobs are balanced around the rDPS they provide because the only true difficulty of the game are dps checks. Everything else is an obstacle course to get there.

Jobs being balanced around doing damage with slight variations is not feasible in the long term.

I've said this different post but the same applies here, the devs need a seperate combat design team that is in touch with the community because the devs sure aren't.

They need to just focus on drafting new gameplay mechanics for everything else in the game.

Having to do story, design, combat, crafting/gathering, relic, is just too much for them to all have full control over.

Because if you have that many things to keep track of, you'll never give them all the same love it needs to thrive.

[Jamini]

Then it seems like it's time to give WHM and SGE 2 minute buff skills so they can contribute to burst as well. AST and SCH being head and shoulders above the others becasue they have 2 minute burst, but also all the capabilities (if not more utility, shielding, and mit) seems like a bad way to balance the healers.

I do want to bring this back up too because...honestly this isn't true. At least it's not for higher-end raids.

Looking at people who do parse (I do not. My client is completely incapable of running ACT. However I have plenty of logs thanks to people who do)... SGE and WHM contribution is legitimately right in line with AST and SCH contribution.

- Grey-parsing healers (below the 25th percentile of people who finish a particular fight) tend to favor WHM and SGE by a few hundred DPS in overall contribution.
- Green-blue parsing healers (25th to 75th percentile) are literally almost dead even. At the 35th and 34th percentile SCH and WHM literally are within eighty dps overall contribution. In one parse between myself and a WHM where we were 34th and 35th equally... the difference in our DPS was 1.4% between ourselves, and literally 0.1% difference over the course of the entire fight.
- Purple and higher parsed healers very slightly favors the buff classes. The very highest parse on P6S has a difference of 324 between their WHM and SCH. A difference of 4% at the absolute pinnacle of play, and a grand difference of 0.4% in the overall fight.

Less than a single percentage point of your group's damage is not "head and shoulders". It's a drop in the bucket that literally only matters if you are intentionally running for a high score.

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I will also point out that SGE + SCH groups have significant trouble with P8S2 this tier. That fight in particular has a ton of healing that needs to be pumped out quickly, and it can be difficult without a very detailed plan to properly heal and mit through those hits.

[VerdeLuck]

I do want to bring this back up too because...honestly this isn't true. At least it's not for higher-end raids.

Looking at people who do parse (I do not. My client is completely incapable of running ACT. However I have plenty of logs thanks to people who do)... SGE and WHM contribution is legitimately right in line with AST and SCH contribution.

- Grey-parsing healers (below the 25th percentile of people who finish a particular fight) tend to favor WHM and SGE by a few hundred DPS in overall contribution.
- Green-blue parsing healers (25th to 75th percentile) are literally almost dead even. At the 35th and 34th percentile SCH and WHM literally are within eighty dps overall contribution. In one parse between myself and a WHM where we were 34th and 35th equally... the difference in our DPS was 1.4% between ourselves, and literally 0.1% difference over the course of the entire fight.
- Purple and higher parsed healers very slightly favors the buff classes. The very highest parse on P6S has a difference of 324 between their WHM and SCH. A difference of 4% at the absolute pinnacle of play, and a grand difference of 0.4% in the overall fight.

Less than a single percentage point of your group's damage is not "head and shoulders". It's a drop in the bucket that literally only matters if you are intentionally running for a high score.

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I will also point out that SGE + SCH groups have significant trouble with P8S2 this tier. That fight in particular has a ton of healing that needs to be pumped out quickly, and it can be difficult without a very detailed plan to properly heal and mit through those hits.

That seems like a problem if SCH does 4% more DPS and also has more ultilty, mitigation,and benefit to the team than a WHM. WHM really only has high output GCD healing and spamming glare. It's utility is both extremely lacking to AST and SCH, and it does lower damage.
That doesn't seem quite right from a balance perspective. Not even to mention we just had a tier where AST was absolutely dominant because one of it's buttons was so good it just invalidated a mechanic and it was a must pick, directly bumping out one healer in particular.
Having better damage, better utility buttons, and more options for OGCD healing and mitigation.

AST could also solo heal DSR on patch 6.1 due to it's high damage contribution, high heals, and shield and mitigation buttons.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Idk I can't really fully blame devs for these changes when alot of them are community driven. People complained about aggro management being to much and so they simplified it basically killing off that part of fights. Loads of folks were asking for Summoner to be an actual summoner so that's exactly what the devs did. Same deal for Ast and it's old cards. Balance fishers complained about the other cards and so they made them all different shades of damage increases only.

This will continue to happen. Personally if I'm seeing said classes on a steady basis they can't be THAT bad. I see summoners all day every day. Know what I don't see? Mch

[ASkellington]

Idk I can't really fully blame devs for these changes when alot of them are community driven. People complained about aggro management being to much and so they simplified it basically killing off that part of fights. Loads of folks were asking for Summoner to be an actual summoner so that's exactly what the devs did. Same deal for Ast and it's old cards. Balance fishers complained about the other cards and so they made them all different shades of damage increases only.

This will continue to happen. Personally if I'm seeing said classes on a steady basis they can't be THAT bad. I see summoners all day every day. Know what I don't see? Mch

Oh I can blame the devs. Yeah the community asked for changes but ultimately its on the devs for poor solutions to address the problem. Take AST for example:

No one asked for all the cards to be Balance. That was the dev's solution to the problems of Balance being the all around best card and poor ways of mitigating bad rng. They could have made the other cards better than Balance in certain situations, they could have given a better RNG mitigation tool or they could have made Balance into something that wasn't a 10% DPS boost. They chose to take the easy route and change the cards to do all the same thing a move literally no one asked for.

Same I suspect with aggro management. And SMN.

And AST actually is pretty bad. Not MCH levels of bad I'll grant but its play rate has dropped in droves since Shb. But cards are just 1 of AST's problems.

[AnnRam]

Community complained for years about " I'm healer I should heal only lol , remove cleric stance why I'm getting dps skills? Wtf my anxiety"

[Jamini]

That seems like a problem if SCH does 4% more DPS and also has more ultilty, mitigation,and benefit to the team than a WHM. WHM really only has high output GCD healing and spamming glare. It's utility is both extremely lacking to AST and SCH, and it does lower damage.
That doesn't seem quite right from a balance perspective. Not even to mention we just had a tier where AST was absolutely dominant because one of it's buttons was so good it just invalidated a mechanic and it was a must pick, directly bumping out one healer in particular.
Having better damage, better utility buttons, and more options for OGCD healing and mitigation.

AST could also solo heal DSR on patch 6.1 due to it's high damage contribution, high heals, and shield and mitigation buttons.

I do not believe you actually understand what I mean. Allow me to explain it tn clearer terms.

1. You are literally talking about the top 0.01% of all players in the game. SCH and AST only begin to pull away from SGE and WHM when you get to the top 15% of all players who even bother to have cleared savage fights. Right off the bat that's a very small number (something like 10% of any game's population even raids, and fewer will clear even one fight in a tier. Much less all of them.)
2. That 4% is not personal damage. It is raid contribution. So you can immediately throw out all of that utility from additional considerations. Same with Chain Stratagem. Both of those are baked into the rdps number
3. You are correct. WHM mostly has high healing output... and in some fights that is extremely helpful. To the point that in the top 20 parses that are currently on P6S (selected because it's a dummy fight that doesn't really have massively hard-hitting mechanics. IDEAL for SCH and AST) nine of those clears have a white mage! Tied with AST for nine top20 clears! Meanwhile SGE and SCH have 11. The breakdown of healers in the top 50 even skews a little the other direction with SGE and WHM having 29% and 27% of the top 50 overall clears respectively (this week) , and SCH and AST are 22% each (this week)

My point here is that your information is not backed by empirical evidence. If anything buffing healers are less represented at the top, even if they have slightly more contribution. Because ultimately all healers are actually in a pretty good place!

Far as I am aware, exactly one team is recorded doing solo DSR AST. It is one of the absolute best teams in the world.
The damage I am including Is not personal damage either. It's raid contribution (so it includes a portion of all buffed damage, taken from the person buffed.)

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Edit:

I also forgot that you are neglecting to note that WHM doesn't exclusively have heals.

1. Regens. Regens are vastly useful and efficient heals. While technically healing, their fire and forget nature often makes them really ideal for the current structure of high-end fights. (Where you have periods of a LOT of damage, then a long recovery period.) - Pairing SGE/SCH with a WHM/AST dramatically makes the job of both jobs much easier as their abilities are complimentary. (And yes, SCH and SGE both have regens. But WHM and AST regens are notably better)
2. Asylum. While not a mit, the +healing on this works on basically all forms of recovery. It's also strictly better than Fae Illumination (which only impacts spells) and combos really well with tank heals like Shake it Off, Aurora, Heart of Corundum.
3. Divine Benson. While ST, it is a shield.
4. Temperance. AoE mit and healing up. Core for WHM play in savage content
5. Aquaveil. A single target mit. Comparable to both skills on SGE and AST.
6. Liturgy of the Bell. A beautiful combination of Panaheima AND earthly star. While it's not a shield, this ability basically means I as a Scholar do not need to do much of anything except pop soil during the entire duration. It's insanely good.

Could WHM do with a group shield? Yes. Do they starkly need it? Not really. Again the difference between the best WHM and the best SCH or AST is a minuscule amount, even less when you consider that healers are less than half as much damage contribution as a DPS is.