Ultimate Representation: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

[fulminating]

I actually disagree about 3 fell cleaves in 60 feeling better than 5 in 90, although that’s going to be subjective and my rationale partially is due to the stacks removing the ability to do it wrong.

There's only been one time I can remember where 'press this button over and over' was interesting, and that's Legion, Warrior's Execute because of the Juggernaut artifact trait. A risk/reward system that made you hit harder and harder until either you died, or the enemy died. Imagine if we had a trait for WAR that said 'each time you FC, your next FC deals 5% more damage, this stacks infinitely, 20s duration' it'd be great fun, imbalanced as hell (top parses would have everyone purposely holding back just so the WAR could pad their stacks), but fun.

I need this - 6 GCDs per 50 or 60 gauge, by the end of the fight fell cleave should be hitting for 700% unless you get dog 1 and laha ruins the fun for everyone. Warrior relative mechanic solutions too, none of this black mage relative silliness.
But yeah, lost blood rage/lost slash made warrior feel complete in a way that endwalker hasn’t captured. The lack of an exploration zone is really hurting the expansion.

[ForsakenRoe]

I actually disagree about 3 fell cleaves in 60 feeling better than 5 in 90, although that’s going to be subjective and my rationale partially is due to the stacks removing the ability to do it wrong.

I get it, I think 4.1 WAR was the best tank design they ever made, then they removed it because 'it doesn't feel good when you do your opener and don't get any crits', like ??? Yeh? That's how openers work?

I need this - 6 GCDs per 50 or 60 gauge, by the end of the fight fell cleave should be hitting for 700% unless you get dog 1 and laha ruins the fun for everyone. Warrior relative mechanic solutions too, none of this black mage relative silliness.
But yeah, lost blood rage/lost slash made warrior feel complete in a way that endwalker hasn’t captured. The lack of an exploration zone is really hurting the expansion.

I guess it's got the same issue as Greased Lightning had for MNK, that you aren't at a baseline and pushing higher, you're behind, and trying to get TO the baseline. That's a player perception issue though.

I did suggest somewhere a 'zone specific Set Bonuses' idea for a new Eureka-Bozja equivalent armor set. With DRK's effect being 'the more you press Bloodspiller, the faster you go, until you hit the engine's hard limit of 1.5s GCD', just because I think it'd be funny. If anyone wants to try playing at 1.5s GCD, you can do it as MNK in Bozja super easily, just use the 'evade 3 times for haste buff' banner (dont remember the name), an essence of the Watcher to trigger it, and Bozja earrings. That's all it needs. Alternatively, RPR and MCH's burst windows are 1.5s GCDs too, but they don't last very long

[Absurdity]

I actually disagree about 3 fell cleaves in 60 feeling better than 5 in 90, although that’s going to be subjective and my rationale partially is due to the stacks removing the ability to do it wrong.

I absolutely preferred 5 Fell Cleaves in IR every 90 seconds, but specifically the Stormblood version simply because there was more to it than just "press this button and spam away"...and because I'm sick of everything being a multiple of 60.

Eye only lasted 30 seconds and IR didn't add additional time, so you had to make sure that you went into IR with at least 17 seconds left on your Storm's Eye to execute your burst and still be able to maintain the buff, making Stom's Eye maintenance an actual mechanic.

Your beast gauge also wasn't just an afterthought that only exists for 1 ability. Every 10 gauge gave 1% crit or parry depending on the stance (but let's be honest, we really only care about the crit) so you wanted to keep it as high as possible for as long as possible. At the same time however you only had 1 stack of Infuriate and every Fell Cleave shaved 5 seconds off of that cooldown (as it still does now), meaning you had to make sure that if Infuriate were to come back up during IR you didn't enter your burst with more than 50 gauge.


Warrior was already simplified a lot with 4.2 but it still had infinitely more nuance than it does now.

[IDontPetLalas]

All of which has nothing to do with the healer role....

[Renathras]

After all that arguing back and forth, you finally say what I was saying (almost). I want 'WHM is Halo, SCH is COD, AST is Battlefield, SGE is Medal of Honor' (is MOH still alive?)

Yeah, but that's not what I'm saying, to the point it completely misses the point and objective.

As I told you in the other thread, unless all difficulties on a Job produce the same DPS, this doesn't work. Each JOB should be one of the difficulties (in terms of its skill ceiling), not within a Job, since there is only ever "doing it right" and "doing it wrong". "Oooh, but you can do it wrong and clear MSQ roulette!" LITERALLY no one cares about whether or not you can clear MSQ roulette...

Isn't this just you making my argument about the 1 button job, the inherent laziness of this playerbase and the necessity of having a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling?

No. You say laziness, I say preference. Not everyone wants or enjoys the same thing. It also certainly doesn't suggest there is a "necessity" of "a substantial gap between skill floor and ceiling".

It suggests we should have at least 3 (ideally 4) levels of complexity in each Role - from easy to medium to heroic to legendary, as I said before - and that each should be balanced to produce the same basic output, just some of them you work harder to get there, where your reward is that you WANTED to.

I think it was Misshapen Chair who said, of Healers specifically: https://youtu.be/sbWubxOTUWU?t=672

Anyways, I think that's enough ranting on this topic FOR NOW. I will finish by saying this:
-Give SCH players 2 DoTs. Make one of them a hard cast. And give them Tri-disaster, and make Aetherflow reset the cooldown of said Tri-disaster.
-Let WHM stay exactly the same so we can meme on it for being the baby healer.
-Bring back Nocturnal AST.
-Bring back AOE DoTs (shows picture of Bane).
-And make SAGE have some wack a** overcomplicated DPS rotation that baffles people's minds and see if they embrace it or not. Because with how safe that Job was on release, it was stale before I even started playing it.
If someone complains that they need to be rewarded with more DPS for their complicated Job; simply tell them that the reward is being able to have FUN, and not being BORED out of their ******* mind! Shut the **** up about a whole 2% DPS variance!
Now let's get out there and go back to mashing one button with drool rolling down our face.

...which, I think, more or less encapsulates my view perfectly. Honestly, other than the equal damage and leaving WHM alone, I'd think most of you would agree with the majority of his video. I disagree with some of his points that the rest of you might more agree with (e.g. fight design, which as we've discussed, HAS changed), but on the whole, I agree with his conclusion and recommended solution. And have for quite some time now. It's what I call the "4 Healers" paradigm/model. That we have 4 Healers, so we should...make them each unique and let people play the one they want/enjoy the most.

I have not spoken to anyone of any level who has no issues with the direction endwalker combat has taken,

Again, what is with you people and putting words in my mouth? Do you know what a loaded question fallacy is, by chance? Or perhaps this is more a strawman fallacy?

I've never said there is no issue with the direction Endwalker combat has taken. I've repeatedly said, across all of these threads, in ALL THREE of these Role forums that it's not going in a good direction and has problems. But that's not a Healer problem, per se, that's an entire holistic encounter design problem.

Everyone agrees the 2 min system is bad. HOPEFULLY, the Devs will hear that come 7.0.

Not everyone agrees the skill floor/ceiling issue is a problem, but some do. Which leads to the above about each role should have both low and high ones. For example, ShB and EW alike, most people are kidna fine with WAR being what it is...as long as the other three Tanks aren't WAR. WHM is in a similar place with Healers in terms of their damage kits all seemingly based around its (though it's a bit more like SB AST's, but whatever; same thing), with the problem being that they're ALL the same, not that they all need large gulfs between skill floor and ceiling, but that at least SOME of them do.

Oh, 100% (more if possible) agree with this, though:

The lack of an exploration zone is really hurting the expansion.

.

People that want a complex job straight up are not going to touch the ACN line as neither Sch is complex nor its Smn

WEEEEELLL.......

As recently as ShB - which, recall, was about a year and a quarter ago - SMN was arguably the most complex Job in the entire game, and SCH is still the most complex of the Healer Jobs. There's an entire thread next to this one where people are arguing how complex SCH optimization is and how Energy Drain is such an amazing ability and they feel great expressing their skill optimizing around it for the higher skill ceiling. Likewise, there's AST - I see you left out AST - which has probably the most complex healing toolkit and the highest APM with the most decision making per second during burst of PROBABLY any Job in the game, and definitely any Healer.

Point is, there are complex Healers NOW - only middling so, but if we look at "across all MMOs", AST and SCH are in the "middle" level of complexity - and they are the two least played. And that's despite one of them leveling "for free" with another Job that is THE MOST PLAYED. You can argue that they aren't the most complex Jobs in all of videogame history (SCH that is, and AST if you wish), but they have nuance to using them correctly, and would probably be considered a middling complexity in most games. Probably on the lower end of middle, but to use the Halo example, they'd be Medium. Not Heroic or Legendary, but not Easy. SGE straddles the line a bit as well, at least while people are learning it and adjusting to it from another Healer or not having played before.

Which would be cool if there was a single complex healer job,

I agree.

thats why a lot of people who want a complex job go to either melee jobs or blm

Most Melee aren't terribly complicated. BLM isn't COMPLICATED, it just requires fight knowledge to execute - moreso than most other Jobs.

or simply stay with their main cause for some players things like aesthetics or irl situations

Oh, I agree. But my point is if everyone REALLY wanted the most complex gameplay they could get, the majority of Healers would be SCH and AST, not WHM and SGE. Again, I'm not arguing that NO ONE wants complex Jobs. I'm arguing that the majority likely do not, and at the very least, a sizeable minority do not (though, again, they're probably the majority)

Which is why, since release Sage is 2nd most populated healer,

Partly agree.

The other part, of course, is that SGE is an easier SCH.

However you're ignoring that a lot of players already have Whm at 80 before EW so its easier to lv up that one than Sge,

10 levels are ridiculously easy to get in FFXIV, especially if you already have a higher level Job with everything unlocked and the Armory Bonus. You can get from 70 to 80 extremely quickly using Bozja.

how its precieved as the comfy pick

BECAUSE IT'S THE EASIEST (WHM, that is). Yes, thank you for stating my point using different words... <_<

It's a grave mistake to assume that the majority of the Whm's are happy with their gameplay though,

Why do you guys always insist on putting words in my mouth? Where did I say "are happy with their gameplay"? I said "prefer a less complex Job". More precisely: "But regardless, the data seems to support, like it or don't like it, that the playerbase AS A WHOLE likes simpler Jobs."

in fact if I were to talk from experience I have found much more experienced Whm displeased with the job state than happy ones across all media.

Anecdote is not data. The data suggests that the majority of players play WHM. Meaning if they liked the more complex Healers - you an say they aren't MUCH more complex, but literally all three other Healers are more complex - they would be more played. And again, looking across roles, we see this in ALL five roles/subroles that the easiest Jobs are the most played. So it's not even just a Healer thing, it's a "the entire playerbase" thing.

They are benefited from flashyness vs Blm

BLM literally has the most flashy spells in the game. SMN's don't get flashy until level 90 when you get the actual Primals. RDM's don't until around level 70 when you get Flare/Holy. This is absolutely the incorrect answer and a pretty...poor attempt at just not admitting what is the most logical answer.

which all the community tell players to not touch if you're new

BECAUSE IT'S THE MOST COMPLEX! It's like...you're saying the same thing I am, just using any words other than "people play the simpler Jobs in general when given the choices".

B L O O D W H E T T I N G, aside flashyness people want to feel powerful and considering dungeons are the majority of content of the game and War is capable of easily doing them solo due to the immenese effectiveness of their tools... well its not hard to see how that is what drives people in and not its gameplay, which when put into drk has been criticized and among the tank community there is the dread of "making all tanks 4 flavours of war"

You're REALLY trying not to admit reality here. PLD is FAR more flashy than WAR is. You don't get Bloodwhetting until level 82. You don't get Raw Intuition (it's predecessor) until 56. And dungeons are simple content that any Tank can borderline solo (if not outright solo) at level cap in current tier tome gear. People who are thirsty for a complex Job ARE NOT PICKING WAR. Right now, they're picking DRK and GNB. Before 6.3, they were picking PLD, too. And all three are less played Jobs.

Your argument here makes no sense as all the other Tanks are more flashy than WAR, more complex than WAR, can easily solo the same content, all three have more iconic and desired Job fantasies (Holy Knight PLD, Dark Knight DRK, and Squall/Lightning borderline-DPS Tank GNB with a sword that's ALSO a gun!). It is very likely, in fact, the gameplay.

This is because its simply the one that works the best in its niche.

Honestly, this one I'll give you, just because the meta right now. But DNC is also the easiest of the three. Like WHM before - if it was ONLY DNC being most played, you'd have a great argument here. But again, across all roles, we see the easiest, least complex Jobs being played.

Fun fact, that is only in NA and EU

Fun fact: No it's not.

Look at the graph: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...nd_raid_mount/

What does the top one say? "Elemental, Gaia, and Mana". Those are the JP servers. RPR is still the most played of the Melee in the region where it is the least popular. The second most played there, btw, is SAM, the second easiest Melee. The four sets of bars are JP, NA, EU, and OCE. In every one, the most played Jobs are WAR, WHM, RPR, DNC, and SMN. In JP, DRK is played ALMOST (but still less) than WAR (PLD was still behind it, and remember this is pre-6.3 PLD, with GNB last in JP), SCH is SLIGHTLY ahead (but still second place) of SGE, SAM and DRG are CLOSHISH TO (but still behind) RPR, BRD is played ALMOST (but still less) than DNC, RDM is played ALMOST (but still less) than SMN. So even in the region that seems more to like complex Jobs, they still don't break into first place, and the only one that breaks into second place (arguably) is SGE.

"there is a lot more to unpack besides easy job"

I don't disagree it's only one component. But it IS a component, and probably a major one. You refusing to even accept it might be A component is just stubbornness.

The data overall very much shows that there are a lot of players in a game of over 5 million that like simple Jobs instead of complex ones. Maybe that's only 1 million (20%), maybe it's 4 million (80%), but it's not 0. Refusing to admit that it's probably a strong drive for at least a decent sized chunk of players is just irrational. And that's not a slight at you, so many people do it, but there's no rational way to do so. Just looking at Healers from - pick a region - WHM makes up, at minimum, 30% of them. There's no rational way to say that any less than 1/5th the player base aren't interested in complex Jobs.

Calling bullshit on that,

There MIGHT be 1,000 or so people that regularly post on the forums. In the Healer forums, you see the same names a lot of you frequent this place. There might be 200, but that's pushing it.

The game's active playerbase is somewhere in the 2-5 million category. Even if we go with the much smaller estimate of 1 million, 10,000 is only 1% of 1,000,000. So even if we give the forums an extra order of magnitude, the ENTIRE forum likely represents less than 1% of the playerbase. (10,000 vs 2 million would be 0.5%, and vs 5 million would be 0.1%)

AND, not even everyone on the forum holds that position - take myself for instance.

second if healers werent complained the most we would see the same activity in other roles forums as well as in general about other roles, however that does not happen,

Have you BEEN to any of the other role forums lately?

The Tanking forum is particularly up in arms about PLD, and PLD and WAR being "shut out" of Ultimates, and consistently complaining about their Role becoming homogenized, dumbed down, and that they don't do "Tank" things anymore, which they consider agro management, mitigation management, and boss positioning. A lot of them complain frequently about the 2 min meta's effect on Tanking, and that they're just "Blue DPS" or "Melee without positionals".

The Damage Dealer forum is STILL mad about Kaiten, also complaining about NIN Mudras, ALSO complaining about SMN being reworked, ALSO complaining about Meleewalker favoring Melees, ALSO complaining about the Ranged tax (that also seems to apply to any Caster not named Black Mage), ALSO complaining about the 2 min meta and how it's harming their Jobs, ALSO complaining about homogenization, ALSO complaining about Job changes like MNK losing positionals, and...

...I could go on for a while.

The other roles are very agitated as well. So even if we pretend the forums are a representative sample that isn't suffering from selection bias (dubious claims), the other Role forums are not happy with their situation and seem to be as much in arms and complaining about it as Healers.

The main difference is a lot - not all, but a lot - of their complaints are about specific things whereas the Healer complaints are more nebulous. And the one commonality across all three is (a) people complaining about the 2 minute meta, (b) people complaining about homogenization (while often asking for it), and (c) the people that want complex Jobs insisting they're the majority of the playerbase and everyone agrees with them.

the closest we had was the kaiten drama and even with that it was still something minimal compared to the multiple hundred-pages-long threads of complains healers have

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Kaiten-removal

"minimal"? That's literally multiple hundred-pages-long threads ABOUT A SINGLE ABILITY on A SINGLE JOB. (Well, one 164 page thread, a couple separate double digit ones, and dozens of others, and it's not even an exhaustive list).

Personally, I don't get why THAT is the drama llama of changes, but it wasn't minimal. The SMN complaint threads alone likely add up to as many as the Healer complaint ones.

No, the other Role forums very much have a similar level of complaint activity. Any one of them could vie for the title of "complained the most".

"Other media like youtube and reddit" are also not representative samples that aren't suffering from selection bias, but they ALSO are complaining about Tanks, Damage Dealers, and freakin' Kaiten.

[QUOTEyou can search anywhere and aside the most casual playerbase anyone who has a minimal job understanding can see the glaring issues the healers have. We have multitude of samples that show it so its about to time to remove the blindfold.[/QUOTE]

What IS it with you and putting words in people's mouths? Stop telling people what they're saying and LISTEN to what they're saying:

No one is saying Healers don't have issues. Not everyone is agreeing on what the solution is. And that's not even the topic WE are discussing. That's you trying to change the topic to one you think you have firmer ground on.

The topic WE are discussing is whether the playerbase as a whole desires more complex or more simple Jobs (the answer is, often, more simple, and never are the MOST complex Jobs the most popular ones) and whether we should make all the Jobs more complex because people all want more complex Jobs and don't want simple ones (which is also clearly wrong)

I agree but there is something called oversimplification and currently all healers fall under it, no job in a tab target mmo be it healer or not should see over 80% of their total GCDs being the same button that has no consequence nor interaction with their kit not see that their reward for good gameplay is basically pressing that button even more

I disagree with the base but not the overall concept.

No ROLE should have EVERY CLASS/JOB IN IT work that way.

It's entirely possible to make classes that work that way and are fun. In WoW Cataclysm, one of my favorite classes was the Arcane spec Mage. It was hyper simple. It had a playstyle SOMEWHAT like BLM's in FFXIV. Here's a joke video of its rotation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISsOjfHgtws

Okay, here's the ACTUAL rotation, single target and AOE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-KTagyxdn8

But serious talk: You had basically four abilities and a "burn phase" vs a "conservation phase". Arcane Blast was your base nuke, which gave you a buff/debuff that increased your damage dealt but also mana consumption of the next Arcane Blast. Arcane Barrage would delete all the stacks to let you start from 0. Arcane Missiles was an ability which could proc and was basically "free DPS". Finally, you had a fire and forget Flame Orb (used on CD), then two CDs, Mana Gem and Evocation (think if Lucid Dreaming was a channeled GCD to refill your MP).

The rotation was use Arcane Blast to low mana, Mana Gem, more Arcane Blast until basically out of mana, then Evocation back to 100%. Then the sustain phase was Arcane Blast x2-3 then Arcane Barrage, repeat for 2 minutes (heh...that 2 minute meta is a cancer, isn't it? Spreads from MMO to MMO!), then repeat. Use Arcane Missiles when it procs, use Flame Orb on CD. That was the rotation. Note that this was a DPS class, not a Healer, with 4 DPS buttons.

The AOE rotation was drop a Flamestrike then spam Arcane Blast.

And...honestly, it was kind of fun to play, with a bit more optimization than it sounds, but the point being, FFXIV's Healers don't even necessarily have the simplest rotations of MMO classes INCLUDING DPS CLASSES across MMO history.

The problem is the buttons we have don't interact well at all - nothing procs anything, there's no give-take phase like Cata's Arcane Mage had, and that ALL FOUR of our Healing Jobs have almost the same DPS rotation aside from arguably SCH, and just barely. This is the point you made that I agree with. The Healer rotations are static, but uninteresting, and they're all the sameish, meaning if you DID want something different, you don't have the option.

Such option should exist - a point I made before.

.

Anyway, to take again from that quote above:

"I think that's enough ranting on this topic FOR NOW." From me, at least.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, but that's not what I'm saying, to the point it completely misses the point and objective.

As I told you in the other thread, unless all difficulties on a Job produce the same DPS, this doesn't work. Each JOB should be one of the difficulties (in terms of its skill ceiling), not within a Job, since there is only ever "doing it right" and "doing it wrong". "Oooh, but you can do it wrong and clear MSQ roulette!" LITERALLY no one cares about whether or not you can clear MSQ roulette...

So we either have:

A: WHM, SGE, SCH, AST as 'Halo on Easy, Medium, Hard, Legendary' respectively. Four difficulty levels of the same flavor of the genre. What do you tell someone who likes FPS games, but doesn't vibe with the SciFi of Halo, and wants a more 'down to earth' real war kind of game like COD is? 'This is all there is, guess the FPS genre isn't for you, try Platformers instead'?

B: WHM, SGE, SCH, AST as 'Battlefield (but you can only play on Easy), Medal of Honor (but you can only play on Medium), COD (but you can only play on whatever they call Hard), Halo (but you can only play on Legendary). Okay, so we have four flavors and they're all different, great. But what if someone likes the SciFi of Halo, but it's too hard for them? The other three games don't have the SciFi aesthetic, so they're told to just suck it up? Stop playing the one you like the feel of, the aesthetic of, because it only comes in one difficulty level, and that level is 'pain'?

I suppose the 'in terms of its skill ceiling' bit means that, you could theoretically play like an ape on this hypothetical 'Legendary only AST' and still do EX trial or lower stuff like that? Which is fine (its part of what I asked for, after all), but then let's flip the issue. A player REALLY likes the gunplay in Battlefield. Or the scale of the conflicts, or whatever reason, they like that one best. One problem. They played it a lot (because they like it so much) and now everything is a cakewalk to them. The game only offers Easy mode, after all. They've hit the skill ceiling, there's nothing more for them to learn about how to be 'better at the game'. So when they ask 'hey could we have a difficulty select', your solution, as it appears to me from your messages, is 'damn that sucks, anyway the new COD comes out next month, go try that'? They don't like COD. They tried it, and it's just not got the same... 'that', as Battlefield does for them. So they are left, in your design, with no recourse but to either play on a game they like, but locked on a difficulty that just isn't interesting for them anymore, or play a game they don't like, in search of the challenge they seek. How are either of these two situations coming up as 'yeh that sems fine to me'?

If everyone keeps 'misinterpreting' your words, or 'putting words in your mouth', on such a frequent basis, maybe it's actually because you are explaining things really badly. I don't see any way to interpret what you are asking for, other than 'one healer should remain really simple and impossible to screw up, because I don't want to put effort in to learning something more than Glare spam'.

oh, or option C: Some other roundabout explanation of how the healers should be seperated, while also desperately trying to avoid acknowledging that 'actually Samantha does know what she's talking about'.

You know what, lets do Misshapen/your idea in a thought experiment. Three healers get increases to complexity, one gets left as it currently is. But here's the question:

What if SE decides AST is the one that is left at 'current level'?

It's not up to us which gets 'left alone'. Some of us might say WHM should be the one, others SGE. But it's all down to SE's final verdict. So, what if SE chooses that AST be left alone, and using it as the 'baseline', as it currently stands, the other three are instead increased, so their complexity is equal to AST? It fulfils the condition of the pitched change, three are increased in complexity, one is left alone. Don't worry, AST's the origin of the 'one nuke, one DOT' gameplay. Or alternatively, I guess you could go on the forums and complain about how you want 'old WHM' back. But not the old-old WHM, the new-old one.

Feel free to come up with some other new ridiculous analogy to explain how I'm misinterpreting you again though, and how your idea is actually misunderstood genius. I'm not big on FPS games anymore, but I liked the curry one

arcane mage

'Times change'

[Renathras]

So we either have:

You're...

...I think the problem is, when we both come up with examples, the other person has something completely different in mind with their examples. Like you thought I meant "aesthetics" not "complexity" (despite the discussion being about the latter, I might add) and are confusing the two.

It's more like:

WHM is Halo on Easy (when you melee the Grunts in the head with the "Grunt Birthday Party" skull active...), SGE is Titanfall 2 on Normal (best single player sci-fi FPS story campaign ever, imo; man, could you imagine if SGE had a big CD where they board a mech for 20 seconds and go ham? ), SGE is Call of Duty on Heroic (or its equivalent; I don't remember CoD difficulty levels), and AST is Battlefield on Legendary (or...its equivalent; do the Battlefield games even HAVE campaigns??)

"But what if I want to play Halo on Legendary or CoD on Eash?!", you ask?

Well...I'm sorry, but we can't have 16 Healer Jobs. I mean............we COULD, but we're never going to get that many. Even WoW only has, what, 6? (Holy Priest, Discipline Priest, Holy Paladin, Restoration Druid, Restoration Shaman, Mistweaver Monk, ...whatever the new one is? Evoker? I don't keep up with WoW except incidentally these days. 7 I guess.) There's no way to accommodate them all, so the best we can shoot for is to accommodate at least a little from each.

B: WHM, SGE, SCH, AST as 'Battlefield (but you can only play on Easy), Medal of Honor (but you can only play on Medium), COD (but you can only play on whatever they call Hard), Halo (but you can only play on Legendary). Okay, so we have four flavors and they're all different, great. But what if someone likes the SciFi of Halo, but it's too hard for them? The other three games don't have the SciFi aesthetic, so they're told to just suck it up? Stop playing the one you like the feel of, the aesthetic of, because it only comes in one difficulty level, and that level is 'pain'?

Basically, yes. Because the alternative is either Battlefield, Medal of Honor, COD, and Halo all on Easy or all on Legendary, and that's objectively worse and more alienating to people. Again, unless we're going to have 16 Healer Jobs or some kind of weird system where you can use more complex rotations but do the exact same damage. Like...

...imagine a world where WHM existed (right...), but you could either spam Glare, use Dia every 30 sec and Assize every 40 sec with Afflatus spells every 20 and a Misery while spamming Glare, had a stance you could activate (perhaps we would call it...I dunno...Lord...VADER? Erm, I mean...CLERIC Stance? Yeah, that sounds good...) that gave you Aero 1, 3, and 4 (and High Aero 2 for AOE) and Water 3 and 4 (and High Water 2 for AOE), Aero 3 (single target) and Aero 4 (AOE) with a chance that Aero 3/4 become instant dealing their full damage at once or Aero 3 become instant, where Aero spells give you stacks (up to three) of "Astral Aero" (you see where I'm going with this) that increase Aero spell MP costs but also damage, and Water spells give you "Umbral Water" (which regenerate MP quickly), when making sure to stay in those effects for 30 seconds grants you a cast of Astral Misery (an instant cast big damage spell and movement tool), laying down Asylum increases spell casting speed/recast speed by 15% for 30 seconds, ...blah blah blah, you get it, this is Black Mage.

But...here's the rub - all the spells have identical potencies on average - Dia and Assize in the second model do the same damage as Glare over the course of a fight, and in the second case...all of that BlackWHM rotation nonsense does the same damage. Basically, no matter which you play, you do the exact same damage as a WHM not in Cleric Stance chain casting Glare.

...that is the only world where the system you want would actually work, because then you could legitimately play Halo, Battlefront, COD, Medal of Honor, whatever, on each of the three difficulties. Keep in mind in Halo, Easy or Legendary, you get the same boss fights and the same missions and maps, etc.

So they are left, in your design, with no recourse but to either play on a game they like, but locked on a difficulty that just isn't interesting for them anymore, or play a game they don't like, in search of the challenge they seek.

The problem is, your design is no better. It says that if people want to play Easy difficulty (or Medium) on ANY game, they can't. They can play Heroic or Legendary badly, and only get the first 2 missions of the game. That's far worse. Imagine a game developer launching a FPS game with only Legendary difficulty, and with a Medium setting that was just as hard, you just did worse on it, had to be carried to get through missions, and could only do the first 2-3 missions of a 10 mission game. That would flop harder than FFXIV 1.0.

If everyone keeps 'misinterpreting' your words, or 'putting words in your mouth', on such a frequent basis, maybe it's actually because you are explaining things really badly.

No, it's because people like straw man fallacies and don't like admitting things that weaken their argument when they could deflect to an attack instead. Also, I suspect some people don't actually read my posts (I don't blame them, they are long, but I read everyone else's before responding to them, so...) and just want to attack instead of seriously and fairly discussing things.

When I literally say I'd like some Jobs to be harder and someone claps back with "You just want every Job to be easy/don't want any Job difficulty", that's them not reading my posts and/or putting words in my mouth and/or committing a loaded question fallacy, not me "explaining things really badly". When I say a thing and people attack me as if I said something directly opposite to or incompatible with it, even when I explicitly say I don't mean that, that's not an explanation issue on my part, that's a listening/reading/pride/fallacy issue on theirs.

'Times change'

Often for the worse.

An important thing to learn in life:

Not all change is good.

...as well you know; times changed with SCH as well, and you would likely agree for the worse not for the better.

No pun intended, but old Arcane Mage was a blast back in the day. Whatever THAT thing is they're calling Arcane Mage now looks horrific, mangled, and miserable to play. How they went from such a great class fantasy and rotation to that garbage is beyond me.

.

Regardless: The point still holds that it's possible to make a Job that is rotationally simple, has few buttons, but is fun to play because the buttons interact with one another. Imagine, for example, if WHM worked like this:

Glare casts work like Astral Fire (increase MP cost and burn rate).
Dia isn't a DoT, it's an instant cast that breaks the Astral Fire effect and refunds MP roughly equal to 3-4 Glare casts.
Assize has a chance to proc when Glare or Dia (or anything, really) is cast, giving you a free damage GCD.
Misery is a CD ability (30 sec or whatever).
Presence of Mind restores 100% MP and has a 1 min CD. (or 2, whatever)

For AOE, Holy replaces Glare (and works the same way), and Dia, Assize, Misery, and Presence of Mind are used the same ways.

The rotation would be to cast 2-4 Glares/Holies, Dia, repeat, Assize on proc, and then when PoM is about 10-15 seconds out, spam Glare to OOM then hit PoM to pop back up to 100% and get back to the conservation phase.

Don't lie and tell me you wouldn't find that at least a bit appealing. Especially vs what we have right now. And I would also find that pretty fun to play. It's simple, streamlined, but fun.

(Honestly, I liked that era's Balance Druid as well - it was similar, you just went back and forth between Wrath/Sunfire and Starfire/Moonfire, spamming that astral barrage whateverthenamewas button on CD, then flipping the other way once you got to the end of the Sun/Moon spectrum. Arcane Mage was basically a simpler but also fun version of the same general concept, a concept that BLM in FFXIV uses today, and ARGUABLY RDM in a very...tangential way, I guess...)

.

I think the key that everyone misses is, whether simple or complex, what makes a rotation fun an interesting is often how abilities interact. Right now, almost no Healer abilities interact, and none in the damage rotation (Solace/Rapture interact with Misery, for example, but are barely considered part of its "damage" rotation, per se). On RDM, Jolt/Fire/Stone interact with Thunder/Aero (technically Thunder/Aero can also proc Dualcast, but...), which all interact with the melee combo, which interacts with the finishers, of which Holy/Flare interact with Stone/Fire, and all of them generate Mana to interact back into the melee combo. The only abilities that it has that don't are Contre Sixte and Fleche. BLM's Fire and Blizzard spells interact with themselves and one another via the Astral Fire/Umbral Ice mechanic and making the other end of the spectrum cast faster and cost less MP while altering their own side (in the case of Fire), and both interact with other systems when maintained. Thunder has a chance of procing Thundercloud, so while it doesn't directly interact with the rest of the kit, it reacts to itself.

Healers, right now, have arguably no such interactions, which is arguably the reason they're so boring, not a lack of buttons or overt complexity.

[ForsakenRoe]

Putting this crap in HB's so it doesn't fill everyone's screen completely cos it's a long one

You're...I think the problem is, when we both come up with examples, the other person has something completely different in mind with their examples. Like you thought I meant "aesthetics" not "complexity" (despite the discussion being about the latter, I might add) and are confusing the two. It's more like:

WHM is Halo on Easy (when you melee the Grunts in the head with the "Grunt Birthday Party" skull active...), SGE is Titanfall 2 on Normal (best single player sci-fi FPS story campaign ever, imo; man, could you imagine if SGE had a big CD where they board a mech for 20 seconds and go ham? ), SGE is Call of Duty on Heroic (or its equivalent; I don't remember CoD difficulty levels), and AST is Battlefield on Legendary (or...its equivalent; do the Battlefield games even HAVE campaigns??)

You're using the FPS again, and it's still not making sense to me. Well, it is, but it's not the message you're trying to convey, because I'm still reading it as 'Keep one of them really simple and boring to play for anyone with a modicum of skill at the game, with no room for skill expression because that might scare the 'real healer' players, the 'fake healer' dps wannabes have three other healers to pick from'. I don't know if you refer to aesthetics, complexity, curry or what at this point. You've gone round in circles so much about it all I feel like I'm reading Uzumaki. Every time you try to explain your design, it doesn't come off to me as 'better' or 'more inclusive', because it doesn't even come off as 'functional'. I'm sure you can say the same about mine, but that doesn't make either of us 'more right' or 'less right' about which direction would increase healer engagement, until one or the other is put into practice. All I can do is base my assertions on the evidence of what I've seen in the past 6 years or however long I've been doing Savage content. And what I've seen is that people actually did keep up with the DPS skillset of healers back in HW and SB. Especially SB, once Cleric was 'fixed'.

Well...I'm sorry, but we can't have 16 Healer Jobs. I mean............we COULD, but we're never going to get that many. Even WoW only has, what, 6? (Holy Priest, Discipline Priest, Holy Paladin, Restoration Druid, Restoration Shaman, Mistweaver Monk, ...whatever the new one is? Evoker? I don't keep up with WoW except incidentally these days. 7 I guess.) There's no way to accommodate them all, so the best we can shoot for is to accommodate at least a little from each.

You can play Holy Paladin as a caster, supporting from the back by spamming Flash of Light/Holy Light on your beacon target to generate Holy Power instead of the whole Meleedin thing. My point is, if you're in a Mythic Raid and the fight is tuned to expect you to deal damage as a Holy Paladin, don't go being surprised when it turns out you hit the enrage because you're missing the damage. There is a 'right way to play' a class in this game, and the closer to 'the right way' you get, the harder the content you can clear. This is true for Tanks, this is true for DPS, this is true for Healers, even in their current state. Clearing harder content is not a right, it's a reward for people who have improved their skill enough to overcome the challenge. If you can't, come back later when more gear means you have more leniency. Like, I can't do Mythic raiding in WOW, I'm not that good (and I'm on a LowPop server), I don't go complaining about it, I accept my skill level and either decide to practice, or just say 'I'm ok being where I am'.

Evoker is the best example of a class with low skill floor, high skill ceiling. You can go on it and use powerful simple stuff like Dream Breath, Spiritblooms, Verdant Embrace, and do fine in dungeons. But then you look deeper and you see that Echo is quite possibly the most interestingly designed healer button in a long time. It replicates Single Target healing to all allies with Echo, or AOE healing on an Echo target is applied a second time (so you can't hit 5 people and have it all duplicate onto one person that'd be crazy). So you can Echo, Reversion (a HOT that extends itself when it crits), and apply two Reversions to the same target. You can purposely DreamBreath at rank 1, so more of the healing is a HOT instead of a frontloaded burst, and Echo people, so it applies that HOT twice. You can Echo 3 different people, and Verdant Embrace a fourth, to heal them all for a massive amount all at once. You can take a Talent called Golden Hour, which restores 15% of the damage the target took in the past 5s, when you Reversion them (like Death Strike for DK). You can Echo THAT heal too. You can use a talent called Lifebind, to make your Verdant Embrace apply a buff to your target, making them receive 40% of the healing you receive, and you 40% of theirs. If you echo them first, they receive that 40%, twice, because you can Echo that too. And don't get me started on Stasis, hoo boy. All the time magic stuff of that spec makes even HW AST look like a chump

But if you just care about doing your Daily Mythic 0s for that weekly quest, and LFR, maybe the first couple of bosses of the raid on Normal, you don't need to know any of that, you can just spam Living Flame on the tank and Dream Breath when the party stands in the swirlies. Just, don't be surprised when it turns out that gameplay doesn't keep them alive in a M+15.

...that is the only world where the system you want would actually work, because then you could legitimately play Halo, Battlefront, COD, Medal of Honor, whatever, on each of the three difficulties. Keep in mind in Halo, Easy or Legendary, you get the same boss fights and the same missions and maps, etc.

I have only played Halo 1, once. I'm pretty sure that, while the 'map and mission' was the same, the layout of enemies, the number of them, and how tough they were, all increased based on difficulty, same as, idk, most other games with a difficulty selection. One that comes to mind right away is MGR because I played it a bit recently. The very first 'room' of the 'non tutorial section' after you get Gamer Mouse body is three mook soldiers. On Revengeance, it's three MegaMonkeys that throw you around like a ragdoll. Same arena, different enemy strength/attack pattern. At the point where you're doing Revengeance mode, you're expected to not just know PerfectParry exists, but to use and abuse it. It's no longer a 'oh thats neat', it's your bread and butter. Since it's been so long since I played Halo 1, I can't remember exactly, but I'd imagine that higher difficulties weed out Grunts in favor of more Elites, Hunters, etc. Or at the very least, changes their weapons to more threatening ones.

What's the difference between P8S Phase 1 on Normal, and on Savage? The attacks are actually surprisingly similar. They have slight nuances to them, sure, like 'oh you don't get an orange AOE shown at all'. Bit like like how 'oh this is the same first level, but the really easy mook has been replaced with a mook that started appearing halfway through the game when I played it on Medium'. You're meant to have picked up on stuff from the normal mode, as tips for how to deal with it in Savage when a bit of extra spice is thrown in. Also, a recent example from Sonic Frontiers(this is a spoiler for Sonic Frontiers so I'll put it in a dropdown thingy)

You cannot even FIGHT the final boss unless you're on hard mode. If you put it on any other difficulty mode, it's dealt with in a cutscene. Which is fine for 'people who want to experience the story' but like... Isn't that what we do with Savage? The 'final boss fight' of Sonic Frontiers could be considered the 'Phase 2' of Supreme, comes with a checkpoint, turning the game off before you beat it requires you refight the previous phase, etc

The problem is, your design is no better. It says that if people want to play Easy difficulty (or Medium) on ANY game, they can't. They can play Heroic or Legendary badly, and only get the first 2 missions of the game. That's far worse. Imagine a game developer launching a FPS game with only Legendary difficulty, and with a Medium setting that was just as hard, you just did worse on it, had to be carried to get through missions, and could only do the first 2-3 missions of a 10 mission game. That would flop harder than FFXIV 1.0.

Strong assertion, but the only way to know for sure 'how hard it would flop' is to put it into practice. Also, again the idea of playing on lower difficulties is not just 'experience the game, with less mastery of mechanics required', it's also a training ground to learn those skills, to improve to the point where you CAN do the higher difficulty. But some people don't want to improve in those training grounds. But at the same time, the absolute majority of this game's playerbase doesn't even do the content where 'you need to play your class at least kind of correctly to beat the DPS check' is a thing. Most of the playerbase's endgame is Limsa Lominsa. So I fail to see how your take on what I'm advocating (which, you got wrong, again) would even affect them, if it were accurate (it's not).

Unless you're saying that P5, P6, P7, P8, P5S, P6S, P7S, P8S P1/2 are like, Halo levels, in one sequential order, rather than 5 6 7 8 being the order and Savage being 'play through them again, but this time all the Grunts are Elites, and all the Elites are now Hunters. And there's a varying time limit on each level before the Halo ring selfdestructs'. You get the story from Normal mode. You get bragging rights from Savage, and absolutely sod all else. Want the mount, or the gear? Work for it, or wait till the increase of ilvl from getting more tome gear means the execution required is more lenient.

Yoshida said recently, in light of the third party tool debacle regarding the World First for TOP:

The ultimate raid series is the most difficult battle content within FFXIV, and we release this content after testing that it can be cleared without the use of any third-party tools. However, if the presumption is that this content will be tackled and cleared with the use of third-party tools, then any reason to develop high-difficulty battle content seems to be lost. It’s very difficult for me to understand as a gamer what the meaning behind using numerous third-party tools to compete to clear first would be.

Or if we jiggle it ever so slightly, so it has the same sentiment, but is relevant to our topic:

The ultimate raid series is the most difficult battle content within FFXIV, and we release this content after testing that it can be cleared by all of the healer classes. However, if the presumption is that this content will be tackled and cleared with the playerbase choosing to play the healing class with the simplest rotational complexity, specifically so that they have less skill expression asked of them by the game, then any reason to develop high-difficulty battle content seems to be lost. It’s very difficult for me to understand as a gamer what the meaning behind asking for harder content, then counteracting that difficulty via class choice,would be.

Like, I don't get it. I do the hard content because I want to challenge myself. I can only find that challenge IN that hard content, because the classes themselves don't have it. If the classes had more skill ceiling to partake in, maybe I wouldn't feel apathetic after getting BIS. I enjoyed progging the tier. I did not enjoy doing reclears of the tier once I had BIS. Contrast that to something like SB, in Alphascape I farmed EVERY O12S weapon. And enough books to also have enough to immediately buy the GNB and DNC ones. I never got tired of the fight, but if it were released now, with me being a healer main, with the healers as they currently are? It'd be another 'farm until BIS on all four healers, burn out and stop doing reclears'.

No, it's because people like straw man fallacies and don't like admitting things that weaken their argument when they could deflect to an attack instead. Also, I suspect some people don't actually read my posts (I don't blame them, they are long, but I read everyone else's before responding to them, so...) and just want to attack instead of seriously and fairly discussing things.

I'm gonna assume people do read your posts, and mine, and have understood them, agreed/disagreed with them. There's a like button to show approval of posts. Mine seem to get more than yours on average. I don't think it's sensible for someone to read one paragraph of my post, go 'ah Samantha wants the same thing I do, me like' without reading the full post and understanding WHY I stand on the position I do for things. So I assume that it's fair to say, those likes are from people who have read the full post, and agree to it enough to bother clicking the like button. If people aren't liking your posts, it's not just 'cos they didn't read', it's cos of any number of reasons. Your arguments are flawed, your wording is antagonistic at times, they think your solution to the problem is not the best one for the game, anything really. But fact is, people seem to agree with the way I'd take things moreso than the way you would. Of course, feel free to just blame it on 'echo chamber'.

When I literally say I'd like some Jobs to be harder and someone claps back with "You just want every Job to be easy/don't want any Job difficulty", that's them not reading my posts and/or putting words in my mouth and/or committing a loaded question fallacy, not me "explaining things really badly". When I say a thing and people attack me as if I said something directly opposite to or incompatible with it, even when I explicitly say I don't mean that, that's not an explanation issue on my part, that's a listening/reading/pride/fallacy issue on theirs.

I am not clapping back with 'you want every job to be easy'. I am clapping back with 'why does one job get forced to stay in the current format, with no skill ceiling to aim for?' If we are moving three of the healers away from the current format because 'current format not good', then it is completely illogical to leave one of them IN that flawed format. I suggested raising the skill ceiling precisely because it would mean that people can still play this current format, provided they accept that if they do so, they are not going to be able to do 'content that the game itself asks them to strive for the ceiling to clear'. I do not accept your BS of 'someone can clear savage now, but they cant if you make WHM harder'. If they can do savage now, they can improve at their class, if they can't improve at their class, they shouldn't have been in Savage in the first place. They were being 'carried' by the lack of 'skill requirement check' the healer role has. This is not me being 'elitist' or whatever label you want to ascribe to me, to try and justify to yourself that 'I can ignore Samantha, she is wrong because <elitist>'. If someone can work out this? Or something like this? But not THIS, that's paradoxical, or just a disingenuous argument. I refuse to believe someone could learn Natural Alignment or High Concept, or Act 2/4 from last tier, or Relativities, or.. How far back do I go? But they can't learn this, because 'one of the healers HAS to stay EXACTLY the same'.

No pun intended, but old Arcane Mage was a blast back in the day. Whatever THAT thing is they're calling Arcane Mage now looks horrific, mangled, and miserable to play. How they went from such a great class fantasy and rotation to that garbage is beyond me.

And Arcane Mages of today would tell you that the Cata version of the spec was braindead, boring, and had no direction or cohesion. There's a reason this picture is a joke to this day, because the gameplay from back then sure sounds like a joke to me. You could probably play the current one, as you did in Cata, and take talents that make it 'less complex' to play. Just, you wouldn't have the same output as someone who was playing with the 'optimal talents', and knew what they were doing. Which brings us back to the crux of the matter: why should someone, who does not know what they are doing, clear content that asks the player 'do you know at least SORT OF what you're doing?'

Regardless: The point still holds that it's possible to make a Job that is rotationally simple, has few buttons, but is fun to play because the buttons interact with one another. Imagine, for example, if WHM worked like this:

Glare casts work like Astral Fire (increase MP cost and burn rate).
Dia isn't a DoT, it's an instant cast that breaks the Astral Fire effect and refunds MP roughly equal to 3-4 Glare casts.
Assize has a chance to proc when Glare or Dia (or anything, really) is cast, giving you a free damage GCD.
Misery is a CD ability (30 sec or whatever).
Presence of Mind restores 100% MP and has a 1 min CD. (or 2, whatever)

For AOE, Holy replaces Glare (and works the same way), and Dia, Assize, Misery, and Presence of Mind are used the same ways.

The rotation would be to cast 2-4 Glares/Holies, Dia, repeat, Assize on proc, and then when PoM is about 10-15 seconds out, spam Glare to OOM then hit PoM to pop back up to 100% and get back to the conservation phase.

Don't lie and tell me you wouldn't find that at least a bit appealing. Especially vs what we have right now. And I would also find that pretty fun to play. It's simple, streamlined, but fun.

'VS what we have right now' is a pretty low bar to stumble over. But while the basics of this idea are in the right direction, it's got issues of it's own. If all of this were 'new skills' it'd be good, I'd even agree with you on something for once. But reworking the current skills to fit this idea doesn't solve the issue, it just moves them to a different place. For example, Misery is now a 30s CD, I assume to mirror Xenoglossy. Okay, so now you have no damage-recoup mechanism for the Lilies. If that 30s CD were a new skill, then that'd be good. Which is why I suggested it (well, mine was 15s). Assize being moved to GCD would just slow the class down even further. If it were on GCD it'd also have to be made much stronger in potency to compensate, leading to even more damage variance. Unless you would distribute that potency elsewhere, in which case you run the risk of the proc not even being worth pressing, which defeats the point. I'll agree on one thing about the idea in it's current state. Having a bigger focus on MP spend/restore as a job mechanic would be good for a healer, and I say this ONLY in the current state of the game, and ONLY because Piety is so dogwater bad as a stat, having a system like that might actually make Piety only be 'kinda trash' instead of 'complete trash'. But part of the reason it worked/works on Arcane Mage, is because of the inherent risk. Evocation is a six second channel, in fight design that loves to tell you 'bitch move' so much more often than what we have here. Just because it's interesting there, doesn't necessarily mean it'll be interesting here.

Also, you've changed WHM. Isn't the whole point of what you're asking for, that WHM doesn't get changed? Or is it 'WHM can change, but only if it remains roughly equal in complexity to how it currently is', in which case, take one of those hypothetical paradoxical healers that you say can learn savage mechanics, but can't learn a new rotation like I suggest for the healers. How do you know they'll be unable to handle learning something what me or others in here have suggested, but they can learn this? In fact, I'm pretty sure you said 'no' to what I suggested for WHM, but it's actually less of a change than this, all I did was reduce Dia to be 12s (so every 4 Glares, you'd Dia, same as your idea here), Banish as a 15s CD (so, same as your Misery), but Misery was the same, Assize was the same instead of being a proc to react to, POM was still a flat speed boost. I think you've accidentally pitched a more complex WHM than I did. Was that intentional?

Besides that though, yes I can agree, it's simple, and it's streamlined. But I cannot agree that it's 'fun' until I've tried it. On paper, several classes in this game sound 'fun'. In practice, they're bloody horrible. BLM is actually my least favourite class. Even BLU, scuffed as it is, is more 'fun' to me than BLM. So based on that, I imagine that actually, maybe this would not be quite as 'fun' as you might think at first glance. Just like how people might find some of my ideas that I thought would be 'fun' to be 'not fun'. I'd give it a try, sure, but I can't guarantee it'd hold my attention, especially if the other healers were also presumably getting increased complexity too.

This bit though?

Regardless: The point still holds that it's possible to make a Job that is rotationally simple, has few buttons, but is fun to play

I am aware, I'm playing a good example of it while I'm waiting for the new tier to come out: Oldschool Runescape. All you need is LMB, RMB, MMB. Combat is 'click enemy, autoattack until it die' mostly. But if you want to look for deeper complexity in the game, you've got bosses, you've got raids, you've got The Inferno to prove you're really good at the game, you've got that accursed Six Jad challenge to show just how well you can prayerflick. PVP in OSRS might well be the most indepth, complex PVP in any game available. So again, difficult content for people who want to challenge themselves, or if someone can't/doesn't want to challenge themselves, they have other things in the game. I've never stuck with the game long enough on any one account to have done The Inferno, or any of the raids. This account is no different. But I'm still having great fun doing my silly little Farming runs, growing my herbs, killing the local Goblin population because Turael told me to. Eventually maybe I will get to the point where I try the raids. It's nice to have that option available. If I can't 'git gud' enough to do the Raids, I'll just be like 'oh ok I'm not good enough, I'll just do <the other 99% of the game that I still have available>. But every time I've tried to say the same for this game, I'm yelled at that I'm gatekeeping or elitist or something

Healers, right now, have arguably no such interactions, which is arguably the reason they're so boring, not a lack of buttons or overt complexity.

I suggested interactions between parts of the kit on healers. Problem is, I suggested that the damage interact with the healing, rather than more damage, by having a gauge fill when you use damage skills. And that's where the difference between our ideas is, I think, I look at it all as 'the game demands we use our DPS moves as healers, might as well make the healing and DPS halves of the kit feel more intertwined, like the class was designed to use them both in tandem', your design seems to put more emphasis on 'keep the healing and the DPS separate'. Well, unless your Assize still has healing attached. If it does, that'd be a disaster, imagine wiping because your WHM says 'oh sorry I was hoping for a proc to heal with'

[IDontPetLalas]

@ Renathras "Also, I suspect some people don't actually read my posts (I don't blame them, they are long" You're may be likely correct, your message may be lost to a number of people by now.

Before anyone reacts to this- no , I am not telling you how long your posts should be or how often you should post. It's simply my impression, take it or leave it.



"but I read everyone else's before responding to them, so...) and just want to attack instead of seriously and fairly discussing things."

Impression number two, you frequently repeat that you are being "attacked", which can also turn off people. Recommendation number 2 (again, feel free to ignore) - consider growing a thicker skin, people usually disagree but haven't "attacked" you.

Incidentally, I did read through all of your and ForsakenRoe's posts - yours was more painful to read for reasons that Roe has already written so I won't repeat them. I would also like to add that I don't just mindlessly click the upvote button, so that also does give some credence towards whose argument *may* be better.

[Renathras]

...

When people question your motives, your skills, or suggest you're behaving based on an attitude or want to derail threads; those are all personal attacks. When people outright declare you're saying something you explicitly said you were not, that's also being used to attack. People being "turned off" when one points out that they're responding to attacks is kind of wrong on their part. They should be upset with the people using the attacks instead.

It's not a "thin skin" thing to get annoyed at people outright saying you're saying the opposite of what you're saying. Moreover, notice how I often DON'T say that, I just bring up their statement and say "No, I'm not saying THAT, I'm saying THIS and even explicitly said I wasn't saying THAT". The post you're quoting was be responding to someone trying to tell me that no one's misunderstanding me, it's just me being bad at explaining things (also kind of an attack), and I was pointing out why that is incorrect; people are, in fact, not merely "misunderstanding", they're intentionally either misreading or not reading things, neither of which is a failure on my part.

As for your last statement: Bias is subtle. I've made a lot of posts. Some of them, at least, have probably been good arguments. Can you recall ever liking a single one of my posts? If not, you may be influenced by bias, not necessarily the better argument... Not saying that is happening, but you are likely not quite a neutral observer as far as that goes. Few people are.

.

EDIT: As for Roe...

...oh boy. I'm going to start a reply, but it's going to be long. The very first point is that I'm going to have to waste time - YET AGAIN - refuting the "real healer" argument - YET AGAIN. Something I've never said and have explicitly spoken against as well. Good god...

By the way, that's more proof of the above - the misreading/not reading - bit. If you liked that post starting with that outright yes, putting words in my mouth (she has it in quotes as her interpretation of what I'm saying), then perhaps you really aren't the judge of what is the "better" argument. And I'll try to find where I even explicitly said that wasn't what I believe. I'm trying to remember which threat that was in...but she was in it, so she likely didn't miss it to claim ignorance now, nor is it the only time I've said I don't have a "real healer" argument. (I absolutely DO think the game needs a Support role and that a lot of people would be happy playing it, but my personal position is that the Healer role can and should easily accommodate both since healing and buffing are two things I see as two sides of the same coin of healing.)

My main problem with Roe is that she sees things through her eyes, and tries to insist that I'm also seeing things through her eyes, so my motivations must be interpreted through her eyes, and if they are done so, that makes them wrong.

That's not the way Humans work.

We each see things our own way, and are motivated by how we see the world. Thus our actions and policies must be based on that - how we see the world - not how our detractors see the world. That is, you would see your own actions differently if you were seeing through someone else's perceptions. So when we talk with people, we have to see how they're seeing things, explain how we're seeing them, and explain our positions through how we're seeing them. I do this, and her responses are often her ignoring all of that and saying how she perceives things as if it was how I do, and interpreting my statements through that lens rather than through the lens of my own perception - even when I've gone to great pains to explain to her what mine is and why she shouldn't be casting my positions in that light.

...like...to great pains.

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Here's the quote: In reply to Ty making that canard/straw man once again and asking me to say flat out what my position is, I quoted myself saying over and over again that I considered Healer to be a very inclusive role with lots of aspects and people being part of it, summarized as such:

Many words, many quotes, to say:

YES, that is my position, and I've said it many times before. It's also why I've never accused anyone of not being a "real healer" and why I'm always confused when you level that accusation - not only have I not ever said it, I don't believe it, and what I have said is in opposition to the notion.

Cure and Medica WHMs in ARR were Healers. DoT refreshing, Ruin spamming, Lustrate cheese support healing through Cleric dancing SCHs were Healers. They were BOTH Healers in a game design that allowed both playstyles and had a great synergy dynamic between them. That's what I think is the ideal to shoot for. A recognition of all the Healer groups and at least one Healer Job that is focused on each so everyone has at least one they can enjoy playing.

Some people straddle lines - for example, I like Pure Healing and Buff Healing/Support - so no one would necessarily be limited if they enjoyed more than one. But every group should have at least one, and then we can all work together to kill pixels that the game tells us are bad pixels. Together. As friends and allies. As fellow Warriors of Light.

...to which YOU, immediately replied, attacking me as trying to posture as a victim and such rather than...reading the above and agreeing with it. (It's also YET ANOTHER example of people putting words in my mouth, intentionally misrepresenting what I've said to make it easier to attack me and/or my positions, even when I've explicitly stated the obvious to leave no ambiguity nor confusion. And ForesakenRoe replied on the very next page, to say:

Seems to me the disconnect here is that Ren thinks when we say 'green DPS' we mean it literally, as in 'a DPS with a green icon', rather than how we actually mean it, as the jokey meme that it is, caused by 'healers have so much downtime between healing bursts, they kinda feel like DPS with healing tools slapped on'

Also in the other thread I pointed out an attitude issue, and your response was 'No I don't have an attitude issue'. But how can you tell, if you're not the one on the receiving end of the attitude?

...a rebuttal to me for what I can only assume is a post she read (she says above, still reading it, that she reads all my posts before replying), yet she once again does the same thing. And this was also, btw, a post attacking me, in this case, for having an "attitude issue". And when I pointed out she likely did as well, and was blind to it...well, she didn't reply to that. No one publicly points out people having "attitude issues" when they aren't attacking them. When things are meant to bring awareness, generally those are done with PMs or the like instead of open forum. Oh, and she got 7 likes for that bit of "better...argument". So forgive me for not seeing likes as indicative of who has the better argument.

My own post where I stated an inclusive view of Healers as including all of us and even noting how I wanted us all to be friends together and all enjoy the game together with Jobs we could enjoy?

Yeah, it got 0 likes.

So again, forgive me for not seeing likes as indicating better arguments when posts I make that are good arguments and posts I make that are completely well meaning get none while ones attacking me get half a dozen even if they have almost no content and make no argument other than said attacks.

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Okay, anyway, I really must address the other. Hm, but how to do so with at least some brevity...