Has anyone quit healing?

[Silver-Strider]

I'm not sure how solid a basis we can blame all this on "Well, SCH lost one DoT going from 4 to 3..." is as an explanation for the decline... It's probably one of those "maybe that was a contributing factor, but it wasn't at all the whole story or even necessarily a dominant cause".

There were more factors to consider as well. Aero not being a cross class ability, the homogenizing of Esuna, the removal of Cleric Stance (at least as a toggle), Virus, Protect and Stoneskin, the fairy being weaker and more jank than ever, Excog being laughably weak at the onset, Aetherpact being yet another lackluster capstone skill after the dumpster fire that was Dissipation, that again wasn't addressed until after 2 Ultimates had been released and cleared.

SCH just played differently than before and people weren't crazy about it. Sure, you could say the same for all Healers since they all kind of lost skills going into SB, but SCH felt really rough around the edges.

[Sebazy]

Hm...might have to look at the wayback machine (I think Mr Happy's doing a video series of the Jobs through the expansions, though I'm not sure how far he's done due to the Ultimate race; he has done SMN, though, I know that). I very much remember in ShB players complaining that SCH's kit was gutted then, which means (on the whole), the playerbase DIDN'T feel SCH had been gutted in SB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2mk...ZAoyf7&index=6

SMN still had Shadowflare, Bio and Miasma, Bane, etc. I remember playing SCH in SB and having Bane. I feel like it still had it in 5.0, though, since I remember spreading my DoTs in some of the early dungeons, but it may have been in SMN. They seem to have made Bio 1 -> Bio 2 in SB (in HW they were separate), but otherwise, SB still had the full kit other than that. They changed Shadowflare from an MP cost, 2.5 sec cast GCD Spell into a 0 MP, instant cast, oGCD Ability with a 60 sec CD, and the duration was halved while the potency was doubled (so you got the damage quicker). Miasma 2 was removed at the start of SB for both SMN and SCH, but was readded to SCH (since it didn't have a spmable AOE like SMN, WHM, and AST did), meaning SCH had Miasma 2 during the decline phase.

So it seems, at least on first blush, that the big removals were ShB, not SB. The removes at the start of SB seem to have been quickly reversed (for SCH), and the Job still had access to most of those things for the expansion. Again, first blush.

I'm not sure how solid a basis we can blame all this on "Well, SCH lost one DoT going from 4 to 3..." is as an explanation for the decline... It's probably one of those "maybe that was a contributing factor, but it wasn't at all the whole story or even necessarily a dominant cause".

Just to clarify, SCH lost a significant amount with the release of SB, including Bane. The main thing they got back was across the board potency buffs to get them competitive vs a heavily buffed Noct AST and the MP heavy and short ranged but high damage Miasma II AoE to make up for them having literally no spammable AoE for 4.0. It's also important to note that Bane was never returned. You didn't use it on SCH in 5.0.

And Mr Happy is too toothless to point out these sort of things. Daddy Yoshida might cut off his early access after all.

[SargeTheSeagull]

And Mr Happy is too toothless to point out these sort of things. Daddy Yoshida might cut off his early access after all.

Really sucks how 14 content creators are so scared of losing their media tour spots that they refuse to point out how bad EW's job design is.

[ty_taurus]

Really sucks how 14 content creators are so scared of losing their media tour spots that they refuse to point out how bad EW's job design is.

I know Zepla has discussed game issues more critically at times. She doesn't really dig into it the way others have like Xenosys or Chair do of course. She approaches things politely for the most part, but she has discussed not liking AST and missing SB AST which was her former main job. I believe she's said in video that she wants the old card system back even if she knows it doesn't work all that well in this game, just because it was fun. I don't really believe she's played much of the other healers really to have any real stance on them (other than PVP WHM) and hasn't really discussed them from anything I've seen.

[Sebazy]

I know Zepla has discussed game issues more critically at times. She doesn't really dig into it the way others have like Xenosys or Chair do of course. She approaches things politely for the most part, but she has discussed not liking AST and missing SB AST which was her former main job. I believe she's said in video that she wants the old card system back even if she knows it doesn't work all that well in this game, just because it was fun. I don't really believe she's played much of the other healers really to have any real stance on them (other than PVP WHM) and hasn't really discussed them from anything I've seen.

Yep, Zepla ended up being the only creator that actually pushed Yoshida on healer design/content issues during the EW media tour. She should have gotten more credit for it as she was the only one that went against the pre approved scripts on that one.

[ty_taurus]

Yep, Zepla ended up being the only creator that actually pushed Yoshida on healer design/content issues during the EW media tour. She should have gotten more credit for it as she was the only one that went against the pre approved scripts on that one.

I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

[Renathras]

I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

Honestly, I somewhat agree with this. Not the lethargic bit (though I can KIND of see that, I more felt like it was a "eye of the storm" kind of a break/done intentionally, I guess?), I do kind of agree that I want to see how the team plans things/sees things going forward, if they want to shift a little more back towards ShB or SB in terms of buffs and Job design, etc. Same page on that.

EDIT:

Just to clarify, SCH lost a significant amount with the release of SB, including Bane.

Yeah, but I meant that they got a good chunk of it back. Part of the problem with the data is it's too spread out. The Census happened too infrequently to see exactly WHEN the declines happened (e.g. was it in late HW or early SB? Did it reverse part way into SB or not?), but I think we can at least conclude "complex = better" wasn't the position of the whole playerbase and has never been what determines which Jobs are more popular, as the most played are often on the simpler end of the spectrum. This doesn't mean complex Jobs should be removed (my own position, as always, is for some more complexity with some Jobs), but it does mean that simple ones shouldn't be, and that complexity does drive off a not insubstantial amount of players and is not universally popular.

Also: I did say I might be thinking of SMN, did I not?

Happy's fine. The video is about old abilities, not commentary on the state of the game, so how he feels about "Daddy Yoshida" is irrelevant.

There were more factors to consider as well.

Oh, completely agree. 100% agree there was more going on. I'm more saying "Well, Healers were getting simpler, that's why less people played them" is probably...inaccurate. At the very least, that's only one factor of many going on.

The decline started in sb as all healers started losing things as yoshida started with the "pure healer" mentality.

That's what I'm saying though: We actually can't tell that from the data. Nor does that explanation make sense for why Healers grew again later, since the Healer Jobs have only continued in that direction since then. The decline might be from late HW as well. All that we know is that Healers went down, and have somewhat rebounded since ShB. SB was hardly the "pure healer" mentality as well. Though I still miss Stoneskin and Protect...

And interesting you say WHM was shunned when...it was still the most played... <_<

[Sebazy]

The fact stands that he still won’t call a spade a spade regardless.

And sorry if I sounded harsh, not trying to pick holes. Just clarifying. Early SB was kind of amusing for me as the general consensus on the forums was that WHM was DOA with how awful Lilys and PI looked, whilst people were generally of the mindset that SCH would continue to be dominant. That didn’t pan out on release at all. Thin Air single handedly solved WHMs issues from HW whilst SCH was a gutted mess. Again to be clear, it didn’t get most of its kit back. It got 1 ‘new’ ability which was actually pretty interesting and a bunch of potency buffs. It still wasn’t the old HW SCH for better or worse tho

[ForsakenRoe]

The media tour questions are always the same softballs, we get a total of like 150 questions asked and like 10 are about healing or healers or whatever. The issue is, the 'influencers' who go to the tours are mostly not-healer players, or if they are, they play it as an 'off spec', rather than a main. SE needs to look into inviting more healer mains to balance things out better, else we'll have to just deal with the 'healer representation' at next tour being Mr Happy asking 'yeh uhh is stuff going to hit harder' and Yoshi once again saying 'we think the dungeons will be challenging please look forward to it'. And then it turns out the dungeons are not challenging in the slightest, because they gave us 2 more healing tools we don't need

And sorry if I sounded harsh, not trying to pick holes. Just clarifying. Early SB was kind of amusing for me as the general consensus on the forums was that WHM was DOA with how awful Lilys and PI looked, whilst people were generally of the mindset that SCH would continue to be dominant. That didn’t pan out on release at all. Thin Air single handedly solved WHMs issues from HW whilst SCH was a gutted mess. Again to be clear, it didn’t get most of its kit back. It got 1 ‘new’ ability which was actually pretty interesting and a bunch of potency buffs. It still wasn’t the old HW SCH for better or worse tho

This is the issue, I think. In the end of HW (3.4 onward), we had 'SCH is busted good everyone loves it, AST is busted good everyone loves it, WHM is not good it's MP costs are too high and it doesn't provide anywhere near as much damage to the raid as AST can'. Presumably everyone was hoping for 'SCH AST are relatively the same power level, WHM buffed to catch up to them, everyone is happy', that didn't happen, we got the original lily system.

At the end of SB, the same sort of feeling was in play, 'SCH good, AST good, WHM needs buffs'. But instead of SE buffing WHM to catch up, they also dragged SCH and AST down. In numerical rating terms, SCH was a 9/10, AST was a 8 or 9/10, WHM was a 3/10. Going into SHB, the community hoped that WHM would be buffed to be an 8/10 too. Instead, it was buffed to be a 7/10, with the cost being that SCH and AST were brought down to being a 6/10. Well, on original release of SHB, AST was a 3/10 because it's healing potencies were super bad, and SCH was a -4/10 because they removed energy drain again

All they had to do was put the SHB lilies, onto SB WHM, reduce the MP cost of Stone/Glare slightly, and buff the damage to compare to 'average AST output'. Instead, they didn't just throw out the baby with the bathwater, they threw the bathtub out too

[Absurdity]

I keep saying this, but I really am just anxious for the 7.0 reveal and media tour despite how early it still is. EW has just felt very lethargic for me, and all I want to do is skip ahead and see how the team will respond to a lot of the criticism of not just the healers, but of the burst meta, job design as a whole, etc.

It's probably going to be the make or break expansion for me, if the job and combat design stay as incredibly bland and stagnant as they have been since arguably Shadowbringers then I'm probably going to finally call it quits, 4 years of "maybe they'll turn it around next time" is enough imo. If 7.0 is just more of the same then I doubt that design direction will ever change.