Has anyone quit healing?

[Connor]

Am I the only one who thinks PvP healer design is light years ahead of PvE? You have like 4 abilities yet they’re more interesting and diverse than most of what we have in PvE. And most important there’s a great balance of offense and support without making the jobs feel too far removed from the ‘healer’ role.

Scholar is a pretty good example if you ask me. Managing upkeep of a buff and debuff/dot, tactical usage of Expedient to increase their effects, managing use of Deployment for both dps and support. It’s simplistic enough that it doesn’t feel overly stressful but still needs you to actually weigh up the options of whether to buff the party, debuff the enemy (or both lol since Deployment has two charges). And best of all its literally just three buttons so nobody can say ‘but muh hotbars’ lol. And, obviously I’m not saying they should literally make healers have three buttons each, just making the point of quality of quantity. To me 1000 dps spells is no better than 1 if they’re all just straight up damage. It’s interactions, interesting additional effects, meaningful ways of supporting the party (including dealing damage to the enemy), that make healers engaging, not just ‘more dps spells’ like Yoshi-P seems to think people are asking for

Obviously the charges on healing spells would be replaced with MP costs since it’d be a pain if you ended up literally incapable of healing lol, but I think it’d be much more interesting than what we have now. Plus that’s a PvP balance thing for Recuperate, invincible healers in the past etc, rather than a way to enforce optimised healing strategies (hard to optimise a single direct healing spell lol)

Yoshi Plz let this guy do PvE healers too lol (unless it’s the same person doing both which would be kinda confusing lol).

[IDontPetLalas]

I think you mean Nocturnal sect. Neutral is still around.

But yes, this is almost exactly what I would like too

-Cards returned
-Noct sect and time dilation returned. If possible Celestial opposition reverted too
-Small dps rotation or burst of some kind

To make room, delete/merge some of the ridiculous heal options

Yes thanks that was a typo - it's been too long!

[IDontPetLalas]

Am I the only one who thinks PvP healer design is light years ahead of PvE? You have like 4 abilities yet they’re more interesting and diverse than most of what we have in PvE. And most important there’s a great balance of offense and support without making the jobs feel too far removed from the ‘healer’ role.

Scholar is a pretty good example if you ask me. Managing upkeep of a buff and debuff/dot, tactical usage of Expedient to increase their effects, managing use of Deployment for both dps and support. It’s simplistic enough that it doesn’t feel overly stressful but still needs you to actually weigh up the options of whether to buff the party, debuff the enemy (or both lol since Deployment has two charges). And best of all its literally just three buttons so nobody can say ‘but muh hotbars’ lol. And, obviously I’m not saying they should literally make healers have three buttons each, just making the point of quality of quantity. To me 1000 dps spells is no better than 1 if they’re all just straight up damage. It’s interactions, interesting additional effects, meaningful ways of supporting the party (including dealing damage to the enemy), that make healers engaging, not just ‘more dps spells’ like Yoshi-P seems to think people are asking for

Obviously the charges on healing spells would be replaced with MP costs since it’d be a pain if you ended up literally incapable of healing lol, but I think it’d be much more interesting than what we have now. Plus that’s a PvP balance thing for Recuperate, invincible healers in the past etc, rather than a way to enforce optimised healing strategies (hard to optimise a single direct healing spell lol)

Yoshi Plz let this guy do PvE healers too lol (unless it’s the same person doing both which would be kinda confusing lol).

Very much this. Each healer has its own unique identity, which not only presents options that can appeal to various play styles, but also is fun for those people who are omni-healers and want to mix things up a bit.

Also, as you say the skills themselves are very well designed, they can be fun to manage and there is a good mix of options.

[Renathras]

I mean yoship came out the other month and begged people to try healing because it was such an issue.

To be fair, he begs people to try things all the time - Tanking, Savage, and Ultimates have all made the list. I think Island Sanctuary, too. And he begged people to take pictures of themselves ocean swimming in La Noscea and posting it to their online accounts. So that's not really a good metric, either. My point was more "We don't have any data that backs up the claim Healers are quitting in massive numbers".

I said...

I was referring to the 95%. I'm guessing you meant 95th percentile, but no, it wasn't clear. When someone says 20-25% and your reply is "95% <link>", the most rational way to read that is "Nope, not 20-25%; 95%, and here's my proof". That was why I even asked what percentile that was.

Seems YOU are the one that doesn't read people's responses before replying, since I said 'the reason I don't like Tank anymore' was because the responsibilities beyond 'do damage' were removed.

*cough*

I'll tell you my reason, and likely the reason most others feel that way. It's because we were always Blue DPS. Always. But that was hidden, masked, obscured, by the extra responsibilities we had.

Again, the logical way to read that "We always were Blue DPS, people just didn't see it, but it's always been true just as true as it is now", which implies you were saying Tanks were Blue DPS back then, not "Tanks were not Blue DPS back then, they have not always been Blue DPS, they were Tanks with Tank responsibilities at one time, and those were stripped away leaving nothing but DPS". When you say "were always Blue DPS. Always.", the implication isn't "were NOT always Blue DPS, but have become so". Perhaps you can see the reason I'd misunderstand that based on the actual words you typed. The ones that I read before replying to them.

Not trying to nitpick, but I'm actually reading what you type and replying to that. You just don't seem to type quite what you mean, apparently. Conversely, I type what I mean and you don't read it before replying.

Again, this may stem from us having different interpretations of what "Blue DPS" and "Green DPS" mean.

"Green DPS" is generally taken to mean "DPSer that does support healing/buffing", not "Healer that on occasion contributes to party damage". Likewise, "Blue DPS" would mean "DPS that occasionally uses mitigation abilities" as opposed to "Tank that mildly contributes to party damage". Perhaps the breakdown here is that you are somehow using different definitions, but I'm not sure what definitions you're using. When you talk about Healers, you talk about damage contribution as a necessary part of encounter clears, but when you talk about Tanks, you talk about damage in the sense of damage rotation, instead. So your definitions don't exactly seem...consistent, leading to me being unable to try and identify what the commonality is that makes something a "<color> DPS" in your worldview.

Does Yoshi-P responding to two Q+A questions about 'hey there's so many PF groups that can't find a healer this tier', saying they need to look at the data for the tier, but can see there is indeed a lack of healers, to the point where he says 'please give healer a try' count? question 1, question 2

Not really, since that doesn't say what the overall state of Healers is. It specifically is in reference to JP Datacenters, and seems not to be true across all servers or all datacenters. For example, on Primal, the Healer slots are often the first full in any PF group. I often have to start my own because the Healer slots are already taken when I look at other people's groups. That also doesn't indicate people are quitting the role in massive numbers, it only indicates that top end Healers are not healing Savages in PF groups, which isn't really saying a whole lot about the overall role population.

It's probably started to bounce back a bit, now that we're 20 item levels higher than the Savage is tuned for.

The bounce back started around Jan/Feb 2022, so a year ago. Trends like this are more longer term and thus more durable than that. They don't reflect ilevel changes.

The issue of 'It's too hard to heal this fight' isn't an issue now that you don't need to heal as much,

It wasn't an issue at launch, though, people were just doing it wrong. I healed P5S in...I think it was week 3 or 4 and I had maybe 2 weeks of tome gear (was out a week or so). I just actually used Regen and Medica 2 and relied on my DPS players - what with being alive and all - making up the difference so we beat the enrage. Oh, I cast a lot of Glares/Dosises as well, mind you. But I didn't play as if I was allergic to GCD heals. It was honestly not difficult to heal on WHM once people figured out the mechanics, and I was even capable of saving people that goofed here or there (the odd DPS that ran through the edge of the green puddle, for example), it just cost GCD heals to do so.

I can't speak to the higher fights in the tier because I don't have a Static as I've said and just clear the first one or two (didn't raid Savage before EW, so I consider this about where I want to be as far as PF anyway), but recall - before you discount my statement on the basis of not doing so - that people were complaining about bleeds even from the first fight, P5S. So my experience and knowledge there is valid to the discussion.

Again, the issue isn't that healing was made "too hard". It's that the change was abrupt enough and people were/are still trying to play the way they did in "the before times". And your proposed changes to Healer complexity would result in the exact same kind of paradigm transition requirement, with Enrages if they fail, so just as detrimental to clears.

the waves of people quitting would flare up again.

Again: We don't actually have any data or statistics showing that there were "waves of people quitting" now. At best, we have circumstantial indications based on inferences from a Yoshi P statement which isn't unlike statements he makes about other roles and content on a pretty frequent basis. We have contradictory anecdotal evidence from people in PF, where some say they always see the Healer spots as the last to fill while for others, they're the first to fill. None of this allows us to make the assessment you're making.

'Remove any kind of critical thinking requirement from the role, make it so I can be carried even when I don't do any damage, and make cure spamming not only functional, but technically optimal gameplay'.

Jesus Christ. I've seen some bad ideas for changes for the game but this one might actually be the worst possible suggestion I've ever seen.

Good thing (a) I wasn't making a suggestion and (b) my suggestion wasn't "'Remove any kind of critical thinking requirement from the role, make it so I can be carried even when I don't do any damage, and make cure spamming not only functional, but technically optimal gameplay'", it was "Nah, they could also simply nerf Healer DPS to the point it's irrelevant."

I can't tell if it's you aren't reading my posts as you reply to them, or if you're reading them, but instead of reading the words I've written, inserting your wild fantasies of the strawman you wish I was saying. It's like DBZ Abridged Goku's perspective showing us how he hears Vegita talk: "Blahblahblahlbahblah, Pride, blahblah PRINCE of all, blahlbahlbah Super Saijin, blah blah blah" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQUHZ5KyGY ). Like you're seeing my words, but then you insert all these thoughts and emotions packed into them that aren't present in the original nor in any of my overall statements to even give room to think that they would be implied.

And you're still missing the point. Crit variance in burst windows already means that some pulls end at 0.1% instead of a clear.

And as MANY people have said, basically every time that fact comes up, it means (a) encounters are overtuned and (b) stat weightings are FUBAR, largely because of how ridiculous Crit Direct Hits within the 2 min burst window have become. In short, no encounter that isn't an Ultimate should be tuned that tightly, because it means not only can many parties not clear, the clear vs not clear is decided by RNG, and worse, it makes some valid standard comps completely unviable. None of this is a problem with healing, it's a problem with encounter Enrages being overtuned as well as gearing/stats and the 2 min meta being toxic as all sin.

but now you've made it so low, that if the DPS slack at all,

For someone who constantly berates others as wanting to be lazy and get carried, you're awful quick to support DPS slacking...

And before you say "I'm not saying that"...

This idea takes agency and carry-potential away from the healer,

...yeah, you kind of are.

and turns them into a 'damsel in distress' role, forced to sit on the sidelines and hope the big strong hero (DPS classes) can beat the bad guys.

This is everything wrong with your view of teamwork and healing in a nutshell. There's some crazy toxic...if there was a word for misogyny that was DPS classes as male and Healers as female, that's what you're doing every time you trot this out. I've been on teams. This is the internet so you don't have to believe anything I say, but I'm prior military. Not everyone carries a gun, yet everyone contributes. It's not a "damsel in distress" to be a support role backing up the people who are pew pewing, and they aren't "the big strong hero".

And if, for some reason, you genuinely believed all of that...why...play...Healer..?

I'm not saying "Play another Job/Role", I'm just a big confused why you'd play one that, by it's nature, isn't "the big strong DPS". Let's face it, even you putting everything you can into DPSing, you aren't going to save a run if the DPS are slacking. Now, if you were a SAM or BLM, you COULD carry 3 underperforming DPSers. But you can't as a Healer. You simply don't do enough damage and, as you've insisted over and over, you think the Devs already balance around DPSing Healers, meaning your damage contribution is already baked in. You aren't saving the party, you're only doing your fare share. You're still the "damsel in distress" vs the "big strong hero DPS", you just have fallen for a lie that you are not.

No, you're right, mine isn't the only solution. But if what you just suggested

As discussed, you didn't even get what I said right. But it also wasn't a suggestion.

It's not 'no foresight or consideration for longterm ramifications' to ask for 'something similar to Stormblood', since that's already happened.

And was the point in the game's history where the Healer shortage, by the data, was the greatest. That seems like a pretty BAD idea.

We're working off of what we used to have, and have evidence of how it functioned,

Which seems to have been "very poorly", which is why it was changed in the first place.

Randomly ramping HPS required has no previous basis, and is a complete shot in the dark on whether it would work or not.

No, we have precedence for that, too: ARR and HW. And Healers were a greater percentage of the population back then, meaning there was less of a Healer shortage and the role was more popular.

Now, Regen and Medica2 giving Blood Lily is a little bit better of an idea. We can work with that, potentially.

Well, we agree on another thing. I think I'm going to end this here because I honestly do like when we agree on things.

Also, we're not asking for 'more damage required', we're asking for...

...our Jobs to require us to do far more work for no benefit over what we do right now for absolutely no reason?

No no, I get it, so you won't "be bored", never mind all the people who aren't bored now and that it will, once again, open the skill gap between Healer DPS output causing more parties to be unable to clear which will lead to a larger Healer shortage. In other words, it does all the things you say you don't want to do.

Again: This is why I think the answer is to split up the Healers, then at least you aren't dragging everyone else down with your "fun".

Other classes can time when mechanics are going to happen, down to the GCD.

Some can, many can't, and Healers can do this as well. As you and others are fond of pointing out, encounters at this point have long periods of nothing with periods of mechanics in between them. I can easily map out a Boss's moveset based on Dia refreshes.

They know 'ok the boss is going to jump in 3 seconds, because after this Vorpal is my Full Thrust, and he jumps right after that'. We don't get that kind of intuition, because the Glares blend together.

You don't. I do. Because I have other buttons and CDs besides Glare and I use those for this. It's...not hard.

One, 'I'll believe it when I see it',

Fair. It's ShB all over again.

EX roulettes are gonna hit so hard you won't even have time to spell Holy, let alone cast it!'

...you mean Ex4?

Because we just had that.

It was Ex4.

And most people had fun with it.

And Two, 'Bring it on'

Sweet, problem solved. \o/

cos I'm confident enough in my skill at the role to keep up. But I don't think others are. They'll fall and fail and wipe their parties, and what will they do? They won't improve, they won't practice. They'll loudly complain until it gets changed back.

THEN THEY CAN'T COMPLAIN WHEN IT IS CHANGED BACK.

This exact same thing will happen if the DPS rotations are made more complex unless the Devs then balance around Healers doing no damage so that they don't price out the bottom percents. And if they do that, it'll be trivial for the top percents. Your solution has all the problems you say any other solution has.

Nah, we'd just have Stormblood 2. People who don't engage in highend content at all can ignore the extra buttons to their hearts content.

Unlikely unless the gap is small. The reason we changed from SB to ShB was because of people complaining and because of a massive Healer shortage. You seem not to remember one from that time, but back then, Healer slots WERE the last to fill in PF groups almost universally. Moreover, they're trying to get more people to do content like Extremes and Savages. This flies in the face of that and is exclusionary in a game with Devs that want to be inclusive and have gone to great pains to be so.

I want to go from 6k (by spamming Broil and pressing Bio once per 30s) to 6k (by having 3 DOTs to juggle, and less Broil spam as a result).

You're asking to be flooded with more work for no more reward, but that work will still be required. If the Enrages are as they are today, it means everyone else DOES have to do it. That's the problem. Unless the gap is so small as to make it irrelevant. If you only did 5 more DPS than a Broilspammer, sure, we could have that. But you - or others on your side - would endlessly complain about how all your extra work - work you literally asked for - doesn't give you a reward of more damage.

It's like the Misshapen Chair video where he says to change three Healers, leave on the braindead baby healer ("Probably White Mage..."), and that the people with the more complex rotations will just need to shut up and accept they don't do more damage; their "reward" is "not being F---ing BORED".

at the time gearing-wise where 'playing 100% correct' is necessary.

We're not talking Ultimates...

Because the proposal is very visibly flawed, as you claim with mine.

Except it's not. The idea of making Healers distinct across different playstyles to allow players to filter to the one that fits their desired playstyle is, in fact, the ONLY solution that doesn't carry the problems the other proposed solutions do and is also the only one that has a chance of growing the Healer populations vs all the other solutions (even maintaining the status quo) which will drive people out of the Healer role. It is, in fact, the only one that gets around the downsides and prevents the population from collapsing in on itself.

Which is why they should embrace it, lean into it, and open up so many doors for new design paths, instead of shying away from it.

One Solution: Has problem.
You: And so we can't do that!
Other Solution: Has the same problem.
You: And so we must do that and it's the only viable option.

...that does not make sense.

For example, WHM throw rocks, WHM build new gauge. WHM hit 50 Gauge, can now use new damage-neutral healing tool.

Gating healing behind dealing damage = bad bad BAD idea.

SGE kind of has this problem with Kardia. "Oh look, lots of damage is going out so you can't cast your DPS spell. Look at these pretty shiney heals. Would be a shame if you...couldn't use them...", only worse, since Kardia is relatively minor (if the alternative is a Eukrasian Diagnosis). But yeah: No. That's horrible design UNLESS you have Patchwerk style encounters that allow the Healers to sit and turret. That kind of thing would work better in a game like WoW or RIFT or something where Healers have time to stand around. Not so much in FFXIV where our dances are complex and...very active.

Wow, now WHM has a way to get healing from being efficient with damage,

Translation: People will quit healing in droves when their Tank dies because they didn't have their "being efficient with damage" healing spell available at a critical moment and caused wipe after wipe after wipe and people start kicking and harassing and then bans drop and then PFs have no Healers anymore.

Insisting that 'healers shouldn't have to DPS' just closes so many design paths,

It's so bizarre to me to see someone get things exactly 180 backwards. It's not Healers not having to do DPS that close design paths. It's Healers MUST do damage that does. For example, in a world of Healers don't have to do DPS, you wouldn't need GCD heals to be damage neutral to "not be bad". What paints design into a corner is the damage requirement.

Lastly, you posted some numbers you scraped up via Wayback Machine. We cannot use them as 'accurate data', yeh.

Keep in mind, the alternative is you having presented NO numbers or data, yet presenting your opinion with certainty...

I see the part where HW numbers were much higher than SB onward. But the '(the time Healers were most complex is also the time Healers were the smallest percentage of the population, meaning the time they were the least popular/leveled/played)', that's not quite accurate either. Since Cleric Stance-Dance was in the game in HW, and it was not in SB, it's HW, the part of the numbers where it's way HIGHER, is the 'most complex' time for healers.

Rotationally, no.

All the Healers had more damage (and healing) buttons in SB than in HW and ARR. The population was also much smaller at the time overall, and many Healers at the time didn't DPS. At all. Much less use Cleric. The community hadn't cemented "the rules", and as the community did so, and the rules became "do damage", and the kits were expanded to include more damage abilities, we see the Healer numbers decline.

Keep in mind the HW era, like ARR, used my solution - have Healers with different levels of complexity. ARR/HW WHM had the same number of damage spells as EW WHM, as I've shown you before.

Now I'd argue the real reason the HW number is higher, is not actually because it's 'higher'. I think that's the baseline value, and everything since has been 'below average'.

This is possible, and I somewhat agree with it - I actually did a full write-up on the numbers but I'll probably never post it, but I would note that the numbers very much reflect new Jobs being added to various roles. For all the "Adding a new Job to a role doesn't help" - the actual data suggests it does. Though it is very true that PART of that is based on more Jobs. e.g. if 10 people played Healers and there were only 2 Healing Jobs, the most they can be is 20, where if there's a third Job, they can be up to 30. But at the same time, many people in a role don't level all Jobs in it. Like I didn't level AST until ShB. So at least part of that data is trend indicating, not an artifact of just "more Job slots within a role".

What I was getting at with the data was a lot less specifics - since it's hard to draw specific conclusions without MUCH MORE data - but rather that I was using it to eliminate things that SHOULD be very apparent in the data if they were true. In this case, if there was a massive shortage of Healers, that would be reflected in the data.

It isn't.

Which strongly suggests there is not a massive abandonment of the Healer role.

Any more specific or granular conclusions would need better and more data. But if there were a massive exodus of the Healer role, we would expect to see that here. And we aren't. The conclusion being that there does not seem to be a mass exodus of the Healer role at the present time. This isn't to say the role is HEALTHY, but it's not hemorrhaging, either.

But yeh, it's all speculation, and the numbers aren't exactly reliable for a number of reasons.

Agreed. The only solid conclusion we CAN make with them are that there's not a massive exodus of Healers.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, the 'EX weapon or better' would have also included relics too. How many of those 'healer mains' threw 1500 tomes at a WHM staff, I wonder?

I believe the Lucky Bancho numbers were from well before the Relic. So after Ex4 but before people could get one without doing either Ex4 or Savage. I'm going to say the last round were in October or November of last year...?

[Renathras]

Edit: the current situation is, yoshida knows that a lot of Ast's left because of the cards and healer dps removal (see shb launch interviews)
He genuinely didn't think healing is so easy (Eden interview and EW q&as)
On some level he knows there's widespread dissatisfaction in the role (lowest player count and falling. Feedback he's received states players like the increased healings contradicting his thinking that its too hard)

If one was to be charitable, then he's just not connecting the dots.

I honestly think this is the most accurate take with ONE caveat:

The Healer community is not one monolithic block. Yoshi P recognizes that. Some people like the status quo as it is, some people want to do more healing (required/complexity), some people want to do more damage (required/complexity), and some people want to do more damage and more healing (both). I think Yoshi P recognizes that and isn't sure how to appeal to everyone at the same time.

I've multiple times in this subforum proposed making an approach that appeals to everyone - have one Healer keep the 1 button spam and straightforward healing kit, have one have a more advanced healing and buffing kit, have one have a more advanced damage kit, and have one have a more advanced both. In this way, everyone could/would be satisfied by playing the Healer that plays the way they desire to engage with the content. This is constantly shot down as "You want carries" and similar nonsense, but there's a reason I present it, and it's because of how diverse the Healer community ITSELF is. We don't have 100% or even 99% of Healer players that want more healing, but nor do we have 100% that want more complex rotations, and we have a large amount that are at least satisfied with the status quo. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a convenient way to satisfy all of them at the same time...

But I don't think Yoshi P has figured out what different Healers like, and he gets questions from different segments of the Healer base - some that want more complex damage and some that would quit the role were that the case - and he's confused because, as a non-Healer, he doesn't have personal experience to draw on there, and he doesn't know the Healer divisions well enough to understand that all of these exist at the same time, or how best to appeal to the various Healer factions without alienating the others.

As you say: Many Healers like the increased healing requirements, but you have people wanting more complex damage rotations insisting everyone hates them (since if the more intense healing catches on, that shoots down their chances of getting their desired damage complexity changes and would invalidate their argument that no one wants it and that the game can't work with it as the typical encounter design model).

The answer is: We all exist and we're all Healers, so any potential solution needs to appeal to all four of the factions.

...and we happen to have four Healer Jobs. It's like the stars aligned but no one's figured it out yet. It's like that scene in The Matrix 2. "Three ships. Three objectives." It's convenient to the point of practically fate...

As someone who used to main AST, my "fix" AST would include giving back nocturnal sect

Honestly, as someone who's only dabbled in AST, I fully support this. It was stupid to take away nAST just to add SGE. There's no reason we couldn't have both. "But we would have 2 Pure vs 3 Barrier healers?!?!" "...and this is a problem.......why?"

I don't think any AST complains about the heal and mitigation options in most content.

AST's current kit is honestly amazing, with it being half a Barrier Healer while having nearly as powerful Pure heals as WHM with better MP economy. The Benefic and Helios spell lies are just as powerful as the Cure, Medica, and Regen ones, but cost less MP. On the Healer with better MP generation. That also has buffing utility, a mitigation up 2x as often, and a partywide 2 min Barrier CD (as well as a single-target barrier every 30 sec). It's honestly stupid good in terms of its healing kit.

Am I the only one who thinks PvP healer design is light years ahead of PvE? You have like 4 abilities yet they’re more interesting and diverse than most of what we have in PvE. And most important there’s a great balance of offense and support without making the jobs feel too far removed from the ‘healer’ role.

Yes and no. It depends on the Healer. And it's a three part issue.

1) All your abilities in PvP have low CDs. Even the LBs often have low CDs, 60-120 sec or so. This means you get to press more interesting buttons far more often than PvP encounter designs allow for. Seraph Strike is an AOE 10% damage reduction Protect for 10 seconds on a 20 CD, allowing 50% uptime on a damage reduction, which WHM would never be allowed to have in PvE since encounters would have to be balanced around you using it on CD, and at that point it becomes like old Protect/Proshell where it's not a bonus you bring to the party but an expected mitigation encounters are based around and where players that don't keep 100% uptime on it are bad and cause wipes.

2) Most PvP abilities are "bundled", for example, Afflatus Purgation is basically laser Misery + Temperance + Medica 2 as it grants both Temperance (sorta...it's more a personal increase, so kind of like Presence of Mind, honestly) and an AOE Regen. Seraph Strike grants Freecure(3)/Afflatus Rapture and Protect (or the defensive part of modern Temperance), with the former on a 60 sec CD and the latter on a 20 sec one. AST's doublecast-with-benefits works honestly like a reverse-Eukrasia of sorts, modifying the PRIOR ability you just used. Adlo is Adlo + Chain Strat (more or less) on a target, and Deployment Tactics is Deployment Tactics + Bane. So you get a lot more mileage out of those few buttons.

3) They actually did what I keep recommending for PvE: They made each Healer a different archetype. SGE in PvP isn't a healer. SGE in PvP is a DPS. Not in the "Green DPS" sense; it's just a straight up DPS that happens to splash heal onto a single party member and poop out a Panhaima every 30 seconds. On the other end of the spectrum, AST is ALMOST a pure buffer/healer, having only 3 attacks, with 1 tied to a party heal; and it's rather buff-happy with the cards being AOE, Essential Dignity having a built in HoT (Barrier of dualcast), Gravity as a support spell to set up enemies for your team to pounce on and kill for you, and Celestial River to bend fate and the tide of battles in your party's favor. WHM is its normal direct self (except for Seraph Strike, which makes no sense), with an oddly high amount of crowd control for a Healer (which would be useless in PvE boss fights, of course; Miracle of Nature isn't something you'd use on a raid boss, no matter how hilarious it would be, and WHM already has a Stun with Holy...and it doesn't work on bosses). And SCH is a real hybrid support/damage healer with a lot of buffs combined with potent healing and the most direct on-demand healing LB.

Point being: It's broken the 4 healers into a "debuffer/healer", "buffer/healer", "damage/debuffer/buffer/healer", and "damage...that does a little healing DPSer".

.

I do agree with you that ability interactions are what make things interesting. Like DoTs for the sake of "having something to do" are stupid, but DoTs that actually interact with your kit, proc things, can be stacked where you want to keep the stack from falling off, can be burst for additional damage, etc etc; that's interesting.

To be fair to Yoshi P: A lot of people ARE just asking for "more dps spells". Not everyone, but enough to tilt the conversation.

I don't think everyone would care for PvE Healers to be like PvP Healers, and the encounter design doesn't really work with it - Gravity (single and double cast), Miracle of Nature, Afflatus Purgation, and Mesotes immediately come to mind as not compatible with modern encounter design - but porting a little of that to SOME healers might not go terribly.

Very much this. Each healer has its own unique identity, which not only presents options that can appeal to various play styles, but also is fun for those people who are omni-healers and want to mix things up a bit.

Agreed. Ironically, this is the idea I've been pitching since forever that gets attacked, vs the PvP Healer kits, which actually...just do that...which are widely praised. XD If the PvE Healer kits were massaged a bit into being a bit more like the PvP Healer kits, it would basically be to reflect the position I've argued for for quite a while.

[ForsakenRoe]

Gating healing behind dealing damage = bad bad BAD idea.

SGE kind of has this problem with Kardia. "Oh look, lots of damage is going out so you can't cast your DPS spell. Look at these pretty shiney heals. Would be a shame if you...couldn't use them...", only worse, since Kardia is relatively minor (if the alternative is a Eukrasian Diagnosis). But yeah: No. That's horrible design UNLESS you have Patchwerk style encounters that allow the Healers to sit and turret. That kind of thing would work better in a game like WoW or RIFT or something where Healers have time to stand around. Not so much in FFXIV where our dances are complex and...very active.

Translation: People will quit healing in droves when their Tank dies because they didn't have their "being efficient with damage" healing spell available at a critical moment and caused wipe after wipe after wipe and people start kicking and harassing and then bans drop and then PFs have no Healers anymore.

'I can't tell if it's you aren't reading my posts as you reply to them, or if you're reading them, but instead of reading the words I've written, inserting your wild fantasies of the strawman you wish I was saying. It's like DBZ Abridged Goku's perspective showing us how he hears Vegita talk: "Blahblahblahlbahblah, Pride, blahblah PRINCE of all, blahlbahlbah Super Saijin, blah blah blah" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQUHZ5KyGY ). Like you're seeing my words, but then you insert all these thoughts and emotions packed into them that aren't present in the original nor in any of my overall statements to even give room to think that they would be implied.'

I said that if you don't do damage, the healing can be covered by instead using Medica. Your tank is not going to die because 'you refused to use damage'.

A new HUD element, the 'Nature Gauge' (name is WIP), a simple 0-100 gauge that fills by doing certain actions. Stone/Glare gives 1 point. Aero/Dia gives 1 point on cast, and 1 per tick (5 total over full duration). Water would give 5 due to being used less often than Stone. edit: Forgot dungeons exist, perhaps something for Holy like 'Each enemy hit by Holy grants 2 gauge' so bigger pulls = more gauge per Holy bomb thrown, the 2 instead of 1 would be to compensate for the fact we're probably not multi-DOTting in a pull of 8+ mobs

Upon reaching 50 gauge, you can use a new skill: Blessing of the Elementals (also WIP). This would be a new GCD AOE heal that heals for 500p, restoring 500MP to the WHM, and granting them 3 buffs. These buffs can stack, so if you need to use the skill twice back to back for some insane burst AOE healing, you won't be kicking yourself for losing stacks. These three buffs would be named after the three elements the WHM controls, maybe 'Rage of the River, Ire of the Earth and Wrath of the Winds' or something like that. The three buffs would essentially be consolation prizes so that casting the GCD heal isnt a DPS loss. The 'water one' would turn the next Water/Banish into Flood (yes Banish would go back to being an elemental spell for a second, because our natural roots shouldn't be completely forgotten in favor of pretty lights), 'earth buff' would turn the next Stone/Glare into Quake, and 'wind buff' would turn the next Aero/Dia into Tornado.

The previously suggested 'new skill' I pitched for WHM, that would be accessed by doing damage, was listed as 500p AOE healing. Medica is 400. Plenary adds 200. Heck, Cure3 is now 600p and had it's range buffed. If your party dies because of a lack of healing in that scenario, you should probably look at how you heal and change things around. Doubly so if it's 'now the tank is dead', as you specifically allude to. You have Solace and Cure2, and BOTH are better HPS to use than this tool. And it's kinda hard for tanks to die now, what with all the selfhealing tools they have.

And you really gotta go play/watch current WOW. Stop thinking it's the exact same as how it was back when you played in 'the glory days of Mists'. Disc priest has to stand still to cast it's setup phase, with a bajillion things going on around them. It's still able to function. Paladin's forced to be in melee range (potentially having to peel off cos of 'circle aoe around boss', downtime) to build Holy Power. It's still able to function. Like, here's a boss from the current raid tier, and a POV from the perspective of a Holy Paladin. Yeh, they're melee so the movement doesn't affect them as much, but the point is, look how much you have to move the boss around the arena to make sure the adds are not nearby, and to break the eggs. Meanwhile, In FFXIV we have fights where the boss does literal nothing for up to 40s at a time. P6S is almost criminal for how little you need to move.

You're basing your arguments on things that are not true, and have not been true for literally years. It's no wonder others got so annoyed trying to get through to you.

You're asking to be flooded with more work for no more reward, but that work will still be required. If the Enrages are as they are today, it means everyone else DOES have to do it. That's the problem. Unless the gap is so small as to make it irrelevant. If you only did 5 more DPS than a Broilspammer, sure, we could have that. But you - or others on your side - would endlessly complain about how all your extra work - work you literally asked for - doesn't give you a reward of more damage.

It's like the Misshapen Chair video where he says to change three Healers, leave on the braindead baby healer ("Probably White Mage..."), and that the people with the more complex rotations will just need to shut up and accept they don't do more damage; their "reward" is "not being F---ing BORED".
[/QUOTE]

Then you'll know Mr Chair also asked 'who the f*** asked for this change' when the Kaiten removal occured. Kaiten is busywork, just an extra button that you press before every Iaijutsu. The guaranteed crit change for Midare means that you still do the same damage, but you don't need to Kaiten anymore. Why do people ask for it back so fervently? Because without it, the Kenki Gauge is nothing more than 'can I Shinten yet'. There was gameplay involved with making sure you saved 20 gauge for Kaiten. Did it take any brainpower? No, I'd say it took single digit braincell activity to remember to save 20, but that's still more than what we now have. The same applies to healers. The devs could have made it so SCH had 1 dot instead of 3 in a patch in SB, and rebalanced potencies so we did the same damage. But people would (rightly) complain, because the damage is not the issue. It's how we deal that damage. Imagine if Bunshin was removed from NIN, or Gluttony from RPR, because people complained that it's too hard to remember to save gauge to use them when they come up. The Ninki meter is now the 'Bhava meter' and the... Red Juice meter for RPR is 'Bloodstalk meter'. Just hit it on CD. It'd be so reductive. Maybe you'd argue that'd be better though, idk

It wasn't an issue at launch, though, people were just doing it wrong. I healed P5S in...I think it was week 3 or 4 and I had maybe 2 weeks of tome gear (was out a week or so). I just actually used Regen and Medica 2 and relied on my DPS players - what with being alive and all - making up the difference so we beat the enrage. Oh, I cast a lot of Glares/Dosises as well, mind you. But I didn't play as if I was allergic to GCD heals. It was honestly not difficult to heal on WHM once people figured out the mechanics, and I was even capable of saving people that goofed here or there (the odd DPS that ran through the edge of the green puddle, for example), it just cost GCD heals to do so.

Congrats. I don't doubt that's what you experienced, and what people around you said about how 'hard it is to heal'. But my experience of the tier was different. See, I PF things, so I play with a lot of different people, with different viewpoints, different playstyles. One WHM uses Lilybell for the first raidwide in P8S, the next uses it at the fire/ice of Natural Alignment. Always gotta adapt to things, gotta keep track of not just my own kit, but my cohealer's. Bit more of a challenge than being in VC with a static coheal and asking 'yo when's lilybell up', but why do Savage week 1 if not for the challenge? Anyway, time for backstory. I cleared 5/6/7 week 1, P8S phase 1 before the nerf, and cleared Phase 2 on week 3 (the same week the nerf went live). This was, I think, less because of 'Phase 2 was too hard for poor Samantha' and more 'We can't get to Phase 2 to practice it, because Phase 1 enrage is rolling PF like puff pastry'. This was back when having a RPR, DNC, WAR or PLD was 'lmao disband' tier griefing. I had only the first week of tomes (and was saving them for legs/weapon if I won tomestone, so no tome gear bought) going into P5S, and by P7S, I believe I had one accessory from raid, and some Gloves that were not part of the BIS (they got Piety on them, big sad). At no point during any of my prog, did I hear anyone saying 'damn this is too hard to heal'. Nor was there really any 'oops I didn't heal enough because I was doing damage like last tier'. It was mostly 'oh that hurts kinda more than I expected, OK I'll try to save <mitigation> for that, can we get a <DPS mitigation> there too?' Your view of how things 'are' and 'were' seems to be entirely formed from your own personal experiences. But there's plenty of people who didn't experience what you did, hence why they try to explain that you're not seeing the bigger picture. I had a great time progging this tier. I'd like it if healing stayed this rough. But the resulting damage to PF speaks for itself, so it's likely going to go to somewhere about halfway between Asphodelos and Abyssos for the next tier.

P5S asks for Ilv600, the crafted gear is 610. By having full crafted, we're already outgearing the fight. They ought to consider bumping the crafted gear and normal mode gear down by 10 ilvls, so that the previous tier's savage gear is equal to next tier's crafted. That'd allow for BIS to actually be useful for something beyond reclears/parsing/speedclears, and for the ILV to stop jumping up so bloody far every expansion. We go up by like 20-30 ILVLs during the levelling process, and then a whopping 90 ILVLs because of the 3 raid tiers. Yeh, crafters would be slightly screwed by a change like this (crafted gear is now not as useful) but I think it'd still have a place. If it's equal to the previous tier's Savage loot, it'd be an extra option for stat optimization. EG, if you're a tank and your choice of Boots was Det/Tenacity or Det/Skillspeed (both kinda suck), a crafted set that has Crit/Det boots would still be useful. Also, the fact it can be pentamelded makes it have slightly more potential than the Savage gear. 36 Substat per slot might not sound like a lot, but it can be all the difference at times.

Point being: It's broken the 4 healers into a "debuffer/healer", "buffer/healer", "damage/debuffer/buffer/healer", and "damage...that does a little healing DPSer".

Weird, I see them as 'Damage, and the heal is borderline impractical to use due to tickrate', 'Damage, but as a slow-acting toxin that saps away the enemies resources', 'Damage, with buffs that allow party to deal even more damage (or keep them alive, which means they're doing more damage)' and 'Damage, with incidental healing because of that damage'. AST's the most hilarious example, because Doublecast Gravity into Macrocosmos will halve the HP bar of an entire team. Ironically, the least 'damage' themed of the healers is SCH, and that's not because they don't 'do damage' per se, it's because it's over time, so SCH's kill potential is a lot lower. Hard to burst someone down when your hardest burst hit is the 5k from Broil. But the damage over time of Biolysis is very oppressive.

Try reacting to a MNK enemy diving in and Meteodriving someone on your team. By the time you get a Cure2 cast off, that player's already considered dead by the server. Actually, that's probably not a great example. Because it'd be you, the WHM, that's getting MNK'd. Healing in PVP just doesn't work right, because the server ticks are too damn slow, the potencies of attacks are way too high compared to the heals, and WHM has a bloody cast time for whatever reason when the others don't. Cool, I can stand still in a fast paced gamemode and cast a 1.5s spell to heal someone for 12k. Oh cool, they just got hit by Double Down and it hit them for 12k. That GCD is almost always better spent on damage. If the enemy's dead, they don't do damage to your team anymore. 100% mitigation, they can't contest the crystal, very efficient

[Renathras]

Weird, I see them as...

That's because we see things differently. And you may also be thinking CC while I play Frontlines exclusively.

WHM: Another "set up to knock down" Job, WHM also doesn't have the capability of taking an enemy from 100% to 0% on their own. They have beautiful synergy with their other party members though. Stun an enemy team in a line for your party to either withdraw or kill, an AOE damage to throw to chop down some health so your team can finish them off (or, rarely, getting in a freebie kill from a wounded enemy), a partywide Protect, a partywide Heal, a partywide Regn attached to the stun, a Esuna + Barrier, and a 2 second turn your enemy into a flee. A harmless, little flee...so your allies can kill them without them self-healing to 100% again, which is what would happen if you just used your own attacks on them. WHM can take out targets of opportunity, but seems to work best setting up opportunities for their team to capitalize on.

SCH: Buff team damage, debuff enemy damage, debuff enemy healing, mild healing, damage buffing, speed buff your allies while giving them damage mitigation, and shielding LB with an AOE Esuna (or Wanderer's Paean, I guess, which has an AOE Excogitation attached). SCH is actually the least offensive of all the PvP Healers in a somewhat odd twist. Mummification's power is its debuff, not its 6k damage that requires melee range to even use; Biolysis' damage is, what, 15k or 18k over time? It can be boosted 50%, but the real prize here is the 8% damage dealt Addle you inflict on the enemy team, and it's got a MASSIVE radius when Deployed.

AST: I often keep party members alive with AST's HoT and Barrier. Aspected Benefic is an Essential Dignity with a Regen, and Double Casting it adds a second (slightly smaller) heal with a Barrier. If used when an ally is super low health, you can fill most of their health bar while shielding them from the next attack and having the HoT tick to keep them going. You can provide some pretty ridiculous healing on AST if you're back from the front line and not getting focused, and because its heals are instant cast (unlike Cure 2), you can actually get in clutch heals much more often than you can on WHM. Conversely, it's REALLY hard in Frontlines to catch an entire enemy team in Gravity, especially if you're planning to be close enough to use Macrocosmos. That tends to result in you getting yanked into the middle of the enemy blob by one of their Tanks and then deleted by their party. AST is absolutely a buffer/healer, and Gravity's strongest use is setting up targets for your party to kill - "damsel in distress", I think, is your favorite way of putting it. As you note, it takes off HALF a health bar, meaning you then are stuck spamming Malefics until your party kills the enemies for you while you try to buff and heal/shield them. All those things you said you don't like. And their LB is the most buff/synergy minded one of all the healers: A massive 30% damage taken reduction and damage dealt increase, both of which last for 15 seconds, becoming 10% weaker after each 5 seconds. That's a lot of mitigation as well as boost to your party's outgoing damage.

SGE: No argument there. SGE is the one case of "This is a DPS. You can call it a Green DPS, but it's a DPS." It has no direct heals (the closest thing is Pneuma), and its LB is more of an attack and area denial spell than anything. In theory, it can be used in a "defensive" sense, but in practice, this just means the enemy is going to run into it and be taking chip damage while they try to fight anyway (making it a damage ability) or go around it and try to get more favorable position/pull you out of it/push you out of it (had a MNK do that the other day...perhaps not realizing or not banking on me using the free move to just relocate it to our new position.) SGE is the one of the PvP Healers I can't stand playing.

or keep them alive, which means they're doing more damage

Ah, I see you've found a new way of saying "mitigation" that you can pretend means "damage". That's...literally what the word "mitigation" means, and it's generally considered a form of defensive utility/buffing, not offensive. By nature, something that reduces damage...is defensive. I genuinely don't understand why...well, never mind. Anyway, the word you're looking for is "mitigation".

Congrats. I don't doubt that's what you experienced, and what people around you said about how 'hard it is to heal'. ... Your view of how things 'are' and 'were' seems to be entirely formed from your own personal experiences.

....

That's...literally what you're doing. You're describing how your view was formed...via your own personal experiences. Ahem.

ANY-way: As I pointed out, it was different in different DCs. My first clear, I think the only thing I had was the same thing I always buy first, the Tome ring (since you need two rings no matter what). Otherwise I was in min ilevel gear clearing it. And all I run is PF since I have no Static, as noted. I'll randomly get dragged into things by the FC from time to time, but that's generally once it's been out a while and I've already cleared it myself.

I'd like it if healing stayed this rough.

Great, we agree, then. Though half-way would be fine as well. I'm honestly fine with whichever. Adapting to greater healing needs is fun and not really impossible or anything. Healers in FFXIV have ample tools for dealing with high or consistent damage - their toolkits are arguably built (GCD heals, anyway) around doing so - it's just a matter of making that mental transition and using them. Half-way between P1-4 and P5-8 would probably be fine.

But people would (rightly) complain, because the damage is not the issue. It's how we deal that damage.

I'd be far more inclined to believe this if:

A) Said people were fine with changing 1-3 of the Healers and leaving 3-1 of them alone, since they'd get that "how (they) deal that damage" fix on the one(s) changed, and,
B) If said people didn't also argue that if 3-1 are left alone, their complex one needed to do more damage to "reward" them for it.

Again: You're treating Healers as a monolithic block. We aren't.

I said that if you don't do damage, the healing can be covered by instead using Medica.

Yes, yes, and my point was, locking healing behind dealing damage is a bad idea in general. And one most people (not everyone, but most everyone) agrees is a bad idea. It's why people far more often pitch "damage neutral" or "heal by doing damage" ideas over "damage to unlock healing efficiency" ideas.

Though as I've noted before; all that notwithstanding, SGE already functions this way. It has GCD heals to (in theory) fall back on, but its ideal playstyle is dealing damage which unlocks/provides Healing, it just does so without a separate button press. I suppose you could do something like casting damage spells reduces the CD on Plegma or something (not sure what else they have right now that would really work for "unlocked healing spell that you don't need otherwise"), though that's how SB WHM Lilies worked and it sucked, but maybe something more akin to MCH with Gauss Round/Ricochet, just a healing spell. Or alternatively, make Toxicon an AOE heal. Or make every Kardia proc reduce the CD on Pneuma by 5 sec. I dunno, I'm sure there's some way to do it. Either as an ability anyone can use with a CD but doing your rotation makes it come up faster, or I guess some separate ability. Pneuma would work well because it is damage neutral, meaning when you use it, it's like you're still casting a Dosis (an...AOE Dosis...), but one which gives a party-wide, AOE Kardia (a...rather large...Kardia...)

(The funniest part of Pneuma is it ALSO procs Kardia. I have no idea why, but that amuses me for some reason.)

[ForsakenRoe]

That's because we see things differently. And you may also be thinking CC while I play Frontlines exclusively.

<words about classes>

That's where we're differing. Not in 'I see damage, you see healing' or whatever. The kit was designed with CC balance in mind. The fact it's also in Frontlines is a side effect, and it had to be hastily hotfixed due to massive issues that were not expected, because it was not designed for it. Stuff like 'PLD can allow someone to cap a point risk free via Cover cheese', and 'SMNs can all use Bahamut at the same time and wipe a whole GC from the game'. I don't look at 'what can the class do in Frontlines' because it's not balanced for that, same as how I don't go 'wow X is so OP because it can do <neat trick in EX roulette>'. Now, if it can do neat tricks in raids, like the O11S Cover strats, then yeh, I acknowledge that as a strength the class has.

Thanks for the rundown on how the classes are different in PVP, but I think I'll manage.

Ah, I see you've found a new way of saying "mitigation" that you can pretend means "damage". That's...literally what the word "mitigation" means, and it's generally considered a form of defensive utility/buffing, not offensive. By nature, something that reduces damage...is defensive. I genuinely don't understand why...well, never mind. Anyway, the word you're looking for is "mitigation".

This is the attitude issue people tried to point out. I miss the previous seasons when LB generation was one of the cards. Bole's too turtle-mode for PVP, reminds me of high-ground turtle games in DOTA taking like 2 hours.

That's...literally what you're doing. You're describing how your view was formed...via your own personal experiences. Ahem.

The point is that you put forward a tone that smacked of 'I preach gospel truth', about how everyone was having trouble with the tier's healing requirements. My experiences run counter to that. The explanation, clearly, is that we play with players of different skill levels. The ones I ran into could handle it, adjusting mit usage as needed, as we do with every fight while progging. You got players who had more trouble adjusting, which is fine. But the fact of the matter remains, if SE makes the next tier have the same amount of healing required, the players you bumped into might struggle again. This also ignores the fact that, once we know when to use what, healing required drops like a rock. The issue is not, and has never been, 'how much healing do we need to do in prog'. It's 'how much of that healing is removed when we do reclears, and therefore filled with glarespam in it's place'.

ANY-way: As I pointed out, it was different in different DCs. My first clear, I think the only thing I had was the same thing I always buy first, the Tome ring (since you need two rings no matter what). Otherwise I was in min ilevel gear clearing it. And all I run is PF since I have no Static, as noted. I'll randomly get dragged into things by the FC from time to time, but that's generally once it's been out a while and I've already cleared it myself.

So you ran into people who couldn't adjust fast. I guess because I got my clears faster, I never had the chance to run into these issues, as week 2 onwards I was in duty complete parties? Which, by the sounds of it, means I got lucky.

Great, we agree, then. Though half-way would be fine as well. I'm honestly fine with whichever. Adapting to greater healing needs is fun and not really impossible or anything. Healers in FFXIV have ample tools for dealing with high or consistent damage - their toolkits are arguably built (GCD heals, anyway) around doing so - it's just a matter of making that mental transition and using them. Half-way between P1-4 and P5-8 would probably be fine.

You'd be fine with halfway, I'd be fine with the same as this tier. I'd probably be fine with like, this tier but +25% on top. But it still doesn't solve the core issue. That being, gaps of up to 40s where we have no healing to do, and therefore just GlareDosisOthers the boss. It doesn't matter how hard they make the boss hit, if they then make it just AFK for the next 30s. Why not have the double fist slams in P7S also do raidwide damage, as well as 'dont stand in this'? Instead of having the 'once per minute' raidwide be 'once per minute but now it has a bleed', why not change it so raidwides come out way faster, like every 20s or something?

I'd be far more inclined to believe this if:

A) Said people were fine with changing 1-3 of the Healers and leaving 3-1 of them alone, since they'd get that "how (they) deal that damage" fix on the one(s) changed, and,
B) If said people didn't also argue that if 3-1 are left alone, their complex one needed to do more damage to "reward" them for it.

A: Leaving one of the healers alone would cause it to be perceived by players as 'the bad one' or 'the one idiots play' or whatever. It doesn't take much for an MMO playerbase to write off a class as 'not good'. Even when the perception is completely unjustified.

B: Anyone asking for 'more complexity should mean more damage' is probably a lemon, assuming they are referring to the job's kit in a vacuum, without considering raidbuffing and the like. The whole argument that 'AST should do more damage than WHM' is, in two runs where the same players play the same classes, and only the AST/WHM player changes jobs, it is harder for them to get a perfect run as AST than as WHM, as there are way more factors at play. The RNG of the cards is not the only factor. If it was entirely AST-centric differences, I'd say they should do the same damage. But the fact that AST is reliant on other jobs performing well, for up to 20% of it's RDPS contribution, means I believe that a perfect AST should be slightly ahead of a perfect WHM. At 80th percentile and lower, I'd argue that an AST doing 80th would be at around 96% of the damage of a 80th WHM. This difference would close to equal at around 95th percentile, where the AST would overtake WHM and be, at 99th or Max or whatever you want to call it, around 1.5% to 2% ahead of the WHM. The fact that this requires basically perfect play, and perfect RNG, from not only the AST, but the rest of the party too, means these runs are exceptionally rare. People just love to see 'AST did better' on the 'Max' charts and assume that it happens every time. But how many runs got scrapped, because of bad Lord luck, or bad cards forcing constant 'lmao gotta put one on the physranged again'?

But yeh, I've gone through why I think leaving WHM behind in a 'role revitalization plan' is counterproductive, many times. The spec I play in WOW was in the top 10 mythic raid clears somewhere. Despite that, it's B tier on most tierlist websites and as such, it's hella hard to get invites for groups. Why take my class, when the S rank spec is played by all the FOTM chasers and plentiful in the groupfinder tool? I don't want to see a class have that happen to them here. I watched it happen to WHM in SB, to the casters in HW, to AST at the start of SHB for about 2 weeks before they emergency patched it, and to PLD WAR RPR DNC this tier. Oh, and MCH dear god poor MCH. Idiots in PF going for 'clear party, pls have seen enrage uwu smile' and they lock a BIS MCH out because 'MCH bad'.

On which note, could the reason your numbers dropped in SB be because everyone was saying 'WHM bad omegalul' and insisting on having AST/SCH for everything? If the 'most popular healer' was being blocked from PFs because AST was, lets be real, busted as hell strong, wouldn't it stand to reason that those WHM players would either quit the role and try another class, maybe one of the two new DPS that were added, or just quit altogether? Not everyone would have been fine with 'oh my class is ostracized, I'll just level and play AST instead'

Yes, yes, and my point was, locking healing behind dealing damage is a bad idea in general. And one most people (not everyone, but most everyone) agrees is a bad idea. It's why people far more often pitch "damage neutral" or "heal by doing damage" ideas over "damage to unlock healing efficiency" ideas.

Guess you missed the part where it says 'using BOTE gives three buffs, each turning the next Glare, Dia and Banish into Quake, Tornado and Flood'. It's not shown in the quote I put, because I cut it off to prevent it from being too long, but the whole point of the 'next-cast upgrades to powerful new spell' buffs is to make the heal damage neutral. What else were the buffs gonna do, change the VFX for Glare but have it be functionally identical? If people don't want to be efficient with damage, they can be not-efficient with damage by replacing this cast with a damage-losing Cure3 or Medica. They'll still be able to 'heal enough to clear'. If they're ignoring their damage skills enough that they cannot access this healing tool, they evidently don't care about their damage efficiency in the first place. Or is the issue that 'the heal-only players will be sad they can't use the cool new tool'?

[Renathras]

That's where we're differing.

Meh, it's more in "you see damage, I see healing". When you reword "mitigation" (a term we all know") as "does damage"...I'm pretty sure it's the damage filter lenses you're wearing.

Regardless, as noted, Healers in PvP are neat because they play to the four archetypes, have lots of short CD abilities, and have a lot of multi-effect/packaged/bundled abilities. Which was my point.

This is the attitude issue people tried to point out.

It's not an attitude issue (on my part), it may be on your part. There isn't an attitude nor has there ever been one. No amount of trying to ad hominem discredit a person changes that. In my posts, I'm generally very matter of fact about things, with rare exceptions that I drip sarcasm after someone says something over the top. What "attitude" you're seeing is derived from your mind/viewpoint, not mine.

In this case, when you're so determined to make Healers out as DPSers that you refuse to use a well established term meaning "defensive gameplay" to twist it into "does damage", it kind of shows hwy it's nearly impossible to convince you otherwise. You're using such a broad definition of "does damage" that literally anything could be defined as doing damage. For example, if I set my controller down on WHM for 10 seconds so my MP would fill, you could define that as me "doing damage" since I can then use that generated MP on Glare casts. That is, by doing literally nothing, I MAYBE contributed to "does damage" because I generated a resource that can be used to deal damage. I've said this in some level before, but I'm trying to be direct and as unambiguous as possible to avoid confusion now: If we use definitions this broad, then every Job in the game is a Healer.

With a broad enough definition of "does damage", even taking no action whatsoever could be defined as doing damage. This is why such definitions are so broad as to be meaningless, and thus cannot be used for discussions or paradigms.

My problem is you stubbornly hold on to this, or worse, expand it over time. I wasn't being snarky. I was being honest - that's how we define the word mitigation. But saying "buffs, heals, and mitigates" wouldn't have gotten your "does damage" point, so you changed to stating the definition of mitigation instead of using the word mitigation, since the latter wouldn't have supported your position/argument.

It's really hard to deal with all of you taking such abjectly stubborn views of these things, but you imply snark or "attitude" where none exists. You know what the word mitigation is defined as. You purposely chose not to use it because it would have weakened your position. Which is especially odd since we've collectively agreed, in the past, that of the Healers, AST would be the best candidate for the "heals and buffs" of the four under either the "Change 3" or "more complex across the board" models.

As for PvP AST's buffs: Honestly, I just like that they're all pretty useful and designed to be used. They're AOE and you aren't playing a minigame to try to match seals or fish for one specific one, etc. And this is again where we differ: I like long turtle games. They feel way more epic to me than arcadey "run out, battle, die, respawn, repeat" squishy deathmatches.

The point is that you put forward a tone that smacked of 'I preach gospel truth',

You read A LOT into my posts that I don't put into them. You were the one that implied everyone was having trouble with it, leading to a massive Healer exodus. I was saying that people were able to deal with it once they made the paradigm shift away from status quo healing and that it was an approachable way to play if they did so.

Please - I'm asking this as genuine as I can and not being snarky - stop reading INTO my posts and just read my posts. If I feel like you aren't getting what I'm saying right while doing so, I'm clarify what I mean/try to explain it better so we're on the same page. You've done this several times, but you don't need to read into my posts things or tell me what I'm saying, because I'm not lacing my posts with implication nor am I being ambiguous or vague to mislead, trick, or trap.

I was just explaining your argument - your position was people were quitting over it because it was too hard for them to adjust to. I was arguing that it was only hard for people that refused to adjust. Recall, this was your position, not mine:

The issue of 'It's too hard to heal this fight' isn't an issue now that you don't need to heal as much,

...implying it was "too hard to heal" before people had geared up. I was contesting that with "No, it wasn't too hard to heal", which is what you say your position is now.

You'd be fine with halfway, I'd be fine with the same as this tier.

I'd be fine with either.

I will never cease to be amazed how you feel you need to put words in my mouth when I outright tell you what I feel so you have no need to. Me saying "we agree" means I also would be fine with this level going forward.

It doesn't matter how hard they make the boss hit, if they then make it just AFK for the next 30s.

Honestly, I have no idea why they do this. My guess is to even more coddle DPS players so they can do their rotations, but I have no idea.

A: Leaving one of the healers alone would cause it to be perceived by players as 'the bad one' or 'the one idiots play' or whatever.

No, only bad players would think that. And bad players think that no matter what. You can take any handful of Jobs in this game - it doesn't matter which, say BLM, SAM, and DRG - and morons will tell you one is the easiest and "the bad one" or "the one idiots play". Meanwhile, folks at The Balance and the like are crunching the numbers to see what their actual performances are and the Abacus Logs pour in to say what the average damage for the average player is and what the top end damage for the top end player is...and most PF groups don't care either way.

B: Anyone asking for 'more complexity should mean more damage' is probably a lemon,

Oh, I agree, but there are a lot of them.

Honestly, damage variance within a role/sub-role should realistically not be more than about 1%. If it's more than that, you get the "bad Job" arguments out of the woodwork, even though a 1% difference is entirely within the margin of mere RNG (did you get DHs or Crits at the "right" time or not, ect)

But yeh, I've gone through why I think leaving WHM behind in a 'role revitalization plan' is counterproductive, many times.

You've given reasons, and I've countered them. I've also suggested each of the other healers being the one "left alone" and you shoot those down, too. I suggested SGE (it’s new and has only ever been this way, and people wanting to play the “easy healer” could pick it up at level 70 if they haven’t already to make for an easy transition) and that was shot down. I mentioned SCH and that was shot down. The only one I haven’t mentioned is AST, because it’s not easy as it is (though 7.0 may change that with the dreaded rework), but regardless, it’s not just WHM, since you’ve also attacked any notion of any other.

The spec I play in WOW was in the top 10 mythic raid clears somewhere. Despite that, it's B tier on most tierlist websites and as such, it's hella hard to get invites for groups.

One thing I honestly love about FFXIV - FFXIV is not WoW.

Despite all the hand-wringing over “The Meta(TM)”, few groups actually care outside of world first (which aren’t usually PF anyway; they have Statics, and they also know that a “simple Job” can sometimes be the best for a fight) unless a Job is actively holding back its team because of low output. Meaning if it has comparable output/throughput, the people where it matters will bring it and the people where it won’t won’t care. SAM in SB and MCH in EW weren’t blacklisted because they were “the idiot one”. They were blacklisted because, mathematically, they didn’t bring the output to the party that their competitors did, and the margin was big enough to prevent clears. FFXIV loses out on some of the things WoW does (or used to do...) right regarding Healing, open world, etc, but in terms of parties and groups, it still miles less toxic, even now.

I won't say it's entirely a WoW problem that NEVER shows up in FFXIV, but when it does, it's based on output/throughput/performance, not on how easy the Job is. Top end players bring whatever is "best" to the fight, and don't care if it's "easy" or "hard". Midcore bring what they're comfortable with, and don't care if it's easy or hard. Casuals...don't care at all. Some Tryhard PF groups will care about meta output/performance, but not about easy. Again, MCH wasn't being blacklisted because it was easy. MCH was being blacklisted because it was mathematically inferior to DNC or BRD by a significant enough margin people felt it would endanger clears. If SGE had a 10 button DPS rotation and SCH had a 1 button one, but they did the same damage and had the same healing and mitigation (or both had enough to clear the fight, anyway), then they'd both be equally viable options. If anything, SGE might be the one blacklisted after people have experience with "average players" underperforming on it. But that's also pretty unlikely to happen on a wide scale if it has the tools it needs to do the job.

Why take my class, when the S rank spec is played by all the FOTM chasers and plentiful in the groupfinder tool?

This is a balance argument, not a “is it the baby/idiot one” argument.

On which note, could the reason your numbers dropped in SB be because everyone was saying 'WHM bad omegalul' and insisting on having AST/SCH for everything?

No, because the count is “Job is at max level on a character which has completed the MSQ”. If someone leveled WHM to 70 and it was bad and they leveled SCH or AST, this would make the Healer % go up (since they’re now being counted twice/thrice in the total, once each as WHM, SCH, and/or AST). The only reason the Healer % would go down is if they were leveling a different role, as now Healers would be a smaller percent of the total. You’d still have your WHM at 70, but now you’d have a SAM or RDM or whatever at 70, which would nudge the DPS % up slightly and the Healer % down slightly.

So no, it wouldn’t be because of that. What seems more likely is that people were leaving the ROLE of Healer and picking up another Role. Statistically, DPS, since it went from 52% to 54% to 60% from HW into SB. And it wasn’t into Tanking until ShB, likely due to the addition of GNB at least in part.

A part could have been Healers transitioning to RDM or whatever, though. But that indicates they didn’t like what SCH or AST were like and were leaving the Role entirely, making it not a WHM problem but a WHM, SCH, and AST problem.

So what we saw as we left HW and went through SB is players transitioning from Healers into DPSers, because apparently people didn’t like the healing/way Healers played in SB. This likely also dovetails with Yoshi P's statement at the time that they were making Healers easier in ShB since they saw the Healer population declining in SB. If people hated WHM but were madly in love with SCH's clunk and DoT juggling and/or AST's complexity, then we wouldn't have seen the Healer numbers decline (people would just have swapped away from WHM to SCH/AST), nor would we have seen Yoshi P trying to make the role more accessible. The logical conclusion is that Healer players did not enjoy SCH and AST's gameplay in SB, and many felt WHM was too weak or something, so they did what many have said they'd do if Healers were made more complex - they swapped to (likely the easier of the) DPSers instead, causing a massive Healer shortage and making ques even worse. Something the Devs tried to rectify by making Healers easier again in ShB.

A curious thing, btw:


WHM/CNJ SCH* AST SGE
207,962 243,895 132,102 0
489,836 353,104 407,454 0
529,288 414,201 460,305 0
567,482 466,521 498,606 0
713,135 616,590 655,684 563,011
985,025 850,625 894,615 851,406

WHM started off lower than SCH in HW, but surpassed it going into SB, and has been ahead of it ever since. Almost like SCH’s SB kit was, comparatively/relatively (both numbers went up, but in the “by how much” comparison) less popular than WHM’s SB kit. Which is saying something, considering how bad WHM’s SB kit was. Healers seemed to have disliked SCH’s gameplay and kit more than WHM’s. Interestingly, AST was ahead of SCH from late SB (and yeah, broken as all hells) and into ShB and on to the present, though SGE is right there with SCH and neither is that far behind AST.

There are several curious things here, one of which I said - WHM's kit seemed more popular than SB's SCH or AST ones - but also regarding the Lucky Bancho numbers, WHM's consistently have super high representation in terms of end-game weapons, but SCH (in JP)/SGE (in EU/NA) is second (though the two are pretty close), with AST usually in last and the least played/most rare Healer. This rough order of WHM >> SCH ~= SGE >>> AST is also seen in a lot of online surveys and a lot of anecdotal data (for example, when on Hunt Trains, count sometimes how many Dia vs Biolysis vs EuDosis vs Combusts you see on the boss - yes, there's a display cap, but there are a LOT of Dias vs the rest, and often no Combusts at all), 24 mans often have a healthy dose of WHM/SGE and sometime SCH, but AST is rare and it's somewhat uncommon to see more than one, if even one, out of the six healers, and so on and so forth. (All anecdotal, as noted, but it is interesting it comports with the survey data and Lucky Bancho data.)

Yet here, we see AST in second. Curious. Though the metrics ARE different; Lucky Bancho is "when their Lodestone page was crawled, what Job were they and did they have a ilevel 615+ weapon" (this was back before the Manderville ones were added, so BarbiEx, Tome, or Savage) vs FFXIV Census, which seems to be looking at MSQ completion on the character and what Jobs they have at level cap, but even so, if there were tons of ASTs, one would think statistically the player would log out as them like they logged out on the other Healer Jobs. Surely all the AST's aren't swapping Jobs before logging out just to monkey with datasets, after all.

[Silver-Strider]

WHM started off lower than SCH in HW, but surpassed it going into SB, and has been ahead of it ever since. Almost like SCH’s SB kit was, comparatively/relatively (both numbers went up, but in the “by how much” comparison) less popular than WHM’s SB kit. Which is saying something, considering how bad WHM’s SB kit was. Healers seemed to have disliked SCH’s gameplay and kit more than WHM’s. Interestingly, AST was ahead of SCH from late SB (and yeah, broken as all hells) and into ShB and on to the present, though SGE is right there with SCH and neither is that far behind AST.

The SCH drop can be explained as a result of SE starting their lobotomy of healers in SB. While WHM lost a lot of abilities that either became role actions (Largesse, Cleric Stance, etc) or were just straight up replaced with something (Stoneskin -> Divine Benison), it didn't lose any attacks really and its long standing MP issue had finally been resolved with Thin Air's inclusion, leaving the only real problem with the job being the Lackluster RNG nature of Lilies and Confessions that could fully be ignored since their impact to WHM's gameplay was practically non-existent. AST maintained itself for the most part in SB in terms of functionality as well. Sure, Noct sect was meh but at least it worked well enough to hold itself up and got some new card gimmicks to maintain its identity. In comparison, SCH just flat out lost several of its previous tools such as Shadowflare, Bane, Energy Drain, and Miasma 2 while Bio 1+2 were merged into a single skill. Couple this with Succor/Addlo getting cost increases that made it next to impossible to sustain with, even in casual content, that of course it's going to drop like a stone in the Ruby Sea. It was an effort in futility to play SCH before SE "fixed" it in subsequent patches by returning Energy Drain and Miasma 2 but the damage was done at that point and no amount of making Dissipation playable was going to magically bring back all those players that dropped the job.

There's nothing really curious about that at all.