Has anyone quit healing?

[ForsakenRoe]

You are purposely construing the point I am making into something it is not. If someone is doing 'challenging content' like Savage, there is an expectation, not just by me, but by the game too, that they are of a certain skill level. My point is, for the like hundredth time, if someone is a casual and only does EX roulette, they will not need to change anything about how they play. If they do Savage week 1, of course they will need to change their rotation to match the new class design, just like any class. PLDs had to learn a new rotation when it got overhauled this patch. BUT, if someone does week 14 Savage, when they have full tomestone gear and overgear the fight, then they don't need to change their rotation, because they make up for that lack of dps by their whole team overgearing the fight by like 10 item levels. The game itself expects competence, enforced by an enrage timer. So I don't see why me expecting the same level of competence the game asks for, is an issue. It seems the issue you're picking up, is that you won't be able to use the current rotation to clear Savage anymore. In which case, you have options: wait till you overgear the fight, or practice until the new rotation is muscle memory. If you're good enough to clear early, undergeared Savage, picking up a new rotation is a 'practice on a dummy for a couple hours' job. If you're not good enough to clear undergeared Savage, instead clearing it when you have full tomestone gear, then the changes will have less effect on you. I can, now that I have BIS, entirely ignore my DOT. I'd still do enough damage without it to clear P8S. But in week 1, the game doesn't just expect me to use my DOT, it demands it. The same would be true under the system I'm proposing. Week 1 you'd have to maximize your gameplay (as is expected for any class of all three roles right now), week 7-10 whatever you'd have lenience to make a couple of mistakes, or purposely ignore parts of your kit (i guess?).

If you're trying to say 'well we should be able to clear week 1 Savage with the same gameplay as now' then yes, I disagree with that. I expect that if someone's in content that is as challenging as 'P8S, also you have no guides to work with, work out the mechanics yourself', they should also have the capacity to learn a new rotation for a class, even if that class's role is healer. And I don't think it's a controversial take to say 'I expect players to adapt and improve in terms of skill' when specifically referring to that high end content, where the GAME ITSELF is saying 'I expect players to adapt and improve in terms of skill'. I explained my position on three levels of difficulty, drew a chart to further illustrate the nuance in my opinion, and then you took the orange bars and only made analysis about them, and ignored/misunderstood, whether accidentally or deliberately, what I was trying to say about the difference in expectations that I/the game have of the player, based on the content they are tackling. If you want to stop talking about meat and sauce, that's fine by me. I understand what I'm talking about well enough, it sounds like you want to stop using the metaphor because it's not working for you anymore.

I don't understand what you mean by the last part with the WoW classes. Like, at this point it just sounds to me like you're throwing out random words hoping that you'll trip me up. Which I guess you have done. But based on my interpretation of what you're trying to get at, my point is to have Demon Hunter, which you 'want to play' in terms of gameplay, having several different kinds of gameplay. It works like this already, you can play regular mode where you just build fury and spend it on Eye Beam and Blade dance, or you can play the Momentum build where you have to purposely use Vengeful Retreat and Fel Rush to maintain selfbuffs. Momentum is a much more difficult playstyle compared to regular, as you need to be aware of your surroundings, know when is safe to Fel Rush, etc. Sometimes, Momentum is the better build of the two, doing more damage, and lets assume that it is 5% better than the regular build. The game would expect you to play Momentum for doing Mythic raids, or high Mythic+, but you could clear up to a +15, or a Heroic raid, playing the normal build.

Put another way, you asking 'why am I not allowed to play the way I currently do in Savage in your proposal, i'll do less damage if I do' is akin to me asking 'why can't I play SAM the way I did in Stormblood?' It's because the class changed, and the rotation changed with it. I can still play 'Stormblood SAM' in a EX roulette, burning all the sen on Hagakure and spending kenki on shinten, but that's not the optimal gameplay anymore. Probably clear an EX trial that way too tbh. But Savage asks more of the player, and I think that's fair of the game to ask. If we imagine every class was similar in rotational complexity to healers, then prog would be boring as shit, because we'd not need to focus at all on 'doing damage', the only difficulty would be solving the mechanics of the fight. It's already bad enough when we have fights like P7S, where we find a 'braindead' strat and remove the majority of the complexity of the fight.

Furthermore, in WOW, there is some highend content you'd be able to clear by doing nothing except spamming Flash of Light. Heck, that was THE strat back in vanilla. I think there's also a build that allows you to play 'ranged paladin'. Sort of. But Paladins aren't relegated to FOL spam anymore, they have an active DPS rotation to build resources and spend on instantcast healing tools. FOL is there as the 'I have to heal right now and everything is going horribly wrong' button, with some interplay where you can get a proc to empower it and make hardcasting it mid-rotation worth it.

I'm not saying 'if you don't like the complex gameplay style, don't play the class', I'm saying 'if you don't like the complex gameplay style, don't do the content that demands you use everything in your kit'. If the issue is 'I want to do [content that demands interfacing with complexity] but don't want to [interface with complexity]' then there's just a mismatch of what the player wants from the game, and the game wants from the player. One which has nothing to do with me. In a sense, I'm just the messenger, bringing the game's decree that 'either learn your class, or go back to SSS until you do'. But I don't see why healer is the role exempt from 'learn your bloody rotation'. Pressing a healing button is just as hard as pressing a mitigation button as tank, you just do them at different times relative to the raidwide.

[Renathras]

You are purposely construing...

I'm not "construing" anything.

Someone playing WHM with a 2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 rotation can currently clear Savage. That is the gameplay of the game now, and the model thee game is using. This is a fact. Whether you want to share your content with them or not, they're able to play it and they're able to clear it, and a player still has to know and execute fights to get through them. Further, if they could not, there would be a MASSIVE Healer shortage in Savage. Look at how many Savage Healers parse less than 50. For the sake of argument (since there's not much optimizing in Healer damage kits as it is), let's assume anyone parsing less than 75 wouldn't be able to clear under your model. That would destroy raiding in this game, to the point Yoshi P might seriously consider stopping Savage content because no one's playing it. All those supposed Healers that don't play Healer right now because they're bored with it and maybe playing DPS - even if all of them started playing Healers again, there would not be enough.

"a certain skill level"?

And what is that? What is that skill level? Can you describe it in objective, quantifiable terms? Do you think Healers clearing P8-2 right now do not have "a certain skill level" because they aren't having to play with "challenging" rotations? Why is "skill level" to you, synonymous with "conducting a mechanically complex rotation"? Why is muscle memory (and possibly use of add-ons like timers and HUT/UI altering add-ons to make things like DoTs easier to track...) considered "skill" to you, exactly?

But have you not said before that you don't want anyone not being able to clear content they do now? When I said that Healers with easy rotations should do the same damage, in the past, I believe you replied with something like "Yeah, I'm not one of the people demanding more damage, I just want to be more engaged, so I don't care if they're able to clear the same content and do the same damage, it's not about that"?

.

I dunno, I just don't think it's going to happen the way you want because of all the fallout.

I don't understand what you mean by the last part with the WoW classes. Like, at this point it just sounds to me like you're throwing out random words hoping that you'll trip me up.

What...? o.O

No, I just can't fathom you not understanding this, because it's an extremely simple concept.

You're saying that an idea that gives you 2 options that you may not like is more limiting than an idea that gives you 0 options at all. I'm trying to figure out how to explain to you that 0 is less than 2. I would love to know how you think that 0 is more than 2 and am genuinely confused how to explain basic number theory to you since I thought everyone knew 0 was less than 2.

I'm not trying to be a dick about it, but every time I try to explain it, you rebuff or even attack me and act like there's some kind of hidden message. The concept is so simple, a part of me wonders if you get it and are just refusing to admit it because of how obvious it is and that it would harm your argument to admit that...but I genuinely think you don't get it. I just don't get HOW you don't get it:

If you are offered 2 options out of 30, that is limiting.
But if you are offered 0 options out of 30, that is MORE limiting.

I have no idea how to explain this because it's such an obvious, simplistic concept, I would think everyone would naturally get it...

I'm not trying to be snarky or a dick about it, I just am genuinely confused how you think 0 is more than 2, and how to explain to you that 0 is, in fact, less than 2. Even if you dislike the 2, 2 is still more than 0. I even made the point in FFXIV terms using myself and AST.

If the only Jobs I could enjoy in this game were AST, DRK, and RPR, I'd still play the game even though I dislike those kinds of edgy/dark things. I'd just liberally use Glam. Which...I do

I'm saying 'if you don't like the complex gameplay style, don't do the content that demands you use everything in your kit'.

What you're missing is it doesn't demand our kit right now. You're trying to institute a change that takes something away from people, and you don't seem to be willing to admit that's what you're advocating for, possibly because even you realize that would be a bad thing.

.

The argument ultimately comes down to this:

Right now, Healer is accessible. We still have shortages, but a lot of people have it and enjoy it.

What you're asking for is to make content more exclusive - more elite - and deny people access to it that have access now. This would be a terrible thing to do. Firstly, you're going to alienate all the people you've decided to tell to "git good" - and no, telling them "It's okay, honey. /pat You can do the content in a few months once everyone's done with and you have the baby catch-up gear. /pat" is not going to fly well. But secondly, and what is actually more damning for the game, is it would cause a ridiculously massive Healer shortage that I don't think you see coming. P5-8S had a minor Healer shortage because healing actually required GCDs. That's NOTHING compared to the shortage that would come if every Healer had a NIN or honestly even a RDM damage rotation they had to do while healing if they wanted to clear current content.

It really boggles my mind that you not only don't see this, you don't even count it as in the realm of "vaguely possible that should be considered".

.

And this isn't exclusive to Healers:

But I don't see why healer is the role exempt from 'learn your bloody rotation'.

How much you wanna bet a WAR could 1-2-3 + Upheaval and/or Fell Cleave (and obviously still using its oGCD mitigations just like Healers use their oGCD heals) and still clear Savage encounters? Like, never use Storm's Path, never use Inner Release even, etc. If they're in Tank stance, no one's going to rip threat off of them.

Healers are hardly the only ones "exempt". But the other thing you're missing:

Healers are not DPS

It's the entire reason many people play them - because they do not like DPS rotations. I don't understand what's hard to understand about that, conceptually. They like optimizing healing, they like being a support to their party - I know you don't, but many players do. Do you at least understand that, even if you think they have no place in your game?

I'm not saying "Healers don't do damage", I'm saying "Healers aren't designed to have a damage rotation". Healers in MMOs are almost always designed to be either reactionary or priority system based gameplay models. In NORMAL MMOs, at least some of the DPS are as well. Sadly, FFXIV's combat model has forced almost all of them into a rotation. RDM and I think BRD are still technically priority systems and not rotations - RDM doesn't have a set rotation, as your optimal "next ability to press" is based on what procs you have and the state of your Mana, contrasting something like BLM or DRG that have rigid rotations. As much as people insist they're the same, New PLD's rotation is priority based vs GNB's which is highly rigid, as was Old PLDs. So that was a step in the right direction. WAR's is also something of a priority system, not a rotation. But those can be more mapped out for entire fights where RDM and BRD can't be because of the proc systems they use.

don't do the content that demands you use everything in your kit'.

This should only be true for Ultimates.