Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[Semirhage]

Because in that thread, we were all trying to come together to come up with common sense solutions to perceived issues with the designs of the healers as they are. This thread started out with 'look how complicated I can make WHM, just for the sake of it'. Like, you started out with this:



We aren't trying to make healers 'needlessly complex'. We're trying to add more room for skill expression. If anything, those of us who have put thought into how to do that, have put a lot MORE thought into how to do that, while having as little impact on the skill floor as possible. Saying something like the above, in the very first post of the thread, shows that whatever changes we pitch, both here and previously, are being perceived as 'needless complexity'. So, at least to me, it's understandable why someone might not engage in complete good-faith, when this is the starting position.

Like, we had some ideas we agreed on, Aero 3 as a Phlegma, Protect>Plenary, Eye4Eye>Protraction, etc. Then you make this thread, which starts with such bangers as 'if I wanted to make WHM as needlessly complex as possible I'd add Cleric Stance again but this time it'd lock you out of healing for 10s instead of 5'. Nobody's asking for 'needless complexity'. We're all putting in a lot of effort to our ideas to avoid 'needless' complexity. And at this point, there's no doubt in my mind that if any of us engaged with the topic of the thread, of 'how to make healers absolutely god awful engineering PHD-level to play', it'd be thrown back at us as 'This is what you guys want healers to be like? Thank god you're not on the design team'. Because you're not interested in good faith or bad faith or any of that. You just make these threads to rant about how your perception of how healers should play is THE way, and everyone else is wrong. And you can try to disguise it, or rewrite the same sentiments, or edit messages to add more stuff and then claim we're 'not even reading the response' all you like, at this point everyone's just sick of it. Honestly I'm surprised others are staying so cordial about it.

Bring on fanfest so we can find out what direction the role's going and put all this BS to rest

Essentially this. This is the reason for the gif reply. This happens a lot. "I'm just here making hypothetical threads to discuss things, you guys are reading things into my intent that aren't there"

>Proceeds to make two threads to "feel out the extremes" of healer design, one for simplifying healers down as far as they'll go and one for making them "complex/engaging"
>In the former thread, the WHM design is a few of the Cure fold-ins that have been suggested for years, plus adding a party-wide mitigation. Wait. Adding? I thought the goal of this thread was to make healers as absurdly simple as possible, not "here's how I'd design WHM in the way I'd like it"?
>In the latter thread, the one for making healers "engaging", proceed to add a bunch of pointedly obnoxious, clunky effects to make the healers cartoonish straw versions wildly different from anything anyone here suggests. Hey, why not have Scholar's damage spells confuse the character and randomly swap the effects of every movement key every cast! That's real game design that someone would want.
>How dare you read intent into these threads, they're just for discussion. All of you are bad faith personal attackers and I'm a cerebral creature of pure logic and debate skill

What reply does that merit beyond a languid eyelid-flickering roll of the old peepers?

[ForsakenRoe]

Guys don't do the 'what if tanks had 111111' thing, I tried that one in the past and certain parties said they'd 'actually quite like that, ship it' (or something to that effect). Whatever ridiculous example of 'what if the other roles were as vacuous as healers design wise' you can come up with, it seems there's gonna be at least one person who will come up and say 'yeh I do want that and sod the rest of the people who play the class who wanted to have a skill ceiling of any kind'

Also iirc you could hold aggro in SB with just Provoke and Shirk, without even attacking. If you could do it THEN, you definitely can do it NOW

But what if the tank gets distracted by DPSing and forgets to mitigate!?

Literally had tanks say this in P8S parties. 6min window comes up during a TB and they say 'I ain't mitigating that shit during my pot, I'm pressing LD for it' and then proceed to die because no actual mit on the TB = bleed ticking for like 40k per tick. But they get to keep getting new stuff like Shadowbringer, Primal Rend, Confiteor, and we don't get to have eg Purgation, Meltdown, idk PK Starstorm for AST and [greek sounding word] for SGE?

[ty_taurus]

Guys don't do the 'what if tanks had 111111' thing, I tried that one in the past and certain parties said they'd 'actually quite like that, ship it' (or something to that effect). Whatever ridiculous example of 'what if the other roles were as vacuous as healers design wise' you can come up with, it seems there's gonna be at least one person who will come up and say 'yeh I do want that and sod the rest of the people who play the class who wanted to have a skill ceiling of any kind'

Also iirc you could hold aggro in SB with just Provoke and Shirk, without even attacking. If you could do it THEN, you definitely can do it NOW



Literally had tanks say this in P8S parties. 6min window comes up during a TB and they say 'I ain't mitigating that shit during my pot, I'm pressing LD for it' and then proceed to die because no actual mit on the TB = bleed ticking for like 40k per tick. But they get to keep getting new stuff like Shadowbringer, Primal Rend, Confiteor, and we don't get to have eg Purgation, Meltdown, idk PK Starstorm for AST and [greek sounding word] for SGE?

I genuinely believe that move would kill the game actually. There are too many big players that main tank and would rip the game a new one for doing that to tanks, probably leave and create a chain reaction of content viewers also leaving in their wake. I don't know to what extent, but it would damage the game's reputation far more than ruining healers ever could.

[Semirhage]

I genuinely believe that move would kill the game actually. There are too many big players that main tank and would rip the game a new one for doing that to tanks, probably leave and create a chain reaction of content viewers also leaving in their wake. I don't know to what extent, but it would damage the game's reputation far more than ruining healers ever could.

Yeah, MMO healer communities tend to have this dichotomy where people view them as either 1. Princess Teaparty, the one with the quiet voice on VC who's generally pleasant, hardly ever complains, and is just here to heal and glam or 2. Snarly Saltqueen, always complaining about everything and telling everyone to shut up and stop taking damage.

Problem is, neither of these stereotypes is conducive to being taken seriously. If the population sees you as the first, they just kind of...gloss over whatever you were complaining about because it was an anomaly. Or if you do it too much, they recategorize you as #2, and pfffffff 2 just complains about everything there's no reason to take them seriously.

I genuinely believe healer is the hardest role in an MMO to get momentum on just because most people don't care about them, so their mains' complaints get distorted by such perceptions.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, MMO healer communities tend to have this dichotomy where people view them as either 1. Princess Teaparty, the one with the quiet voice on VC who's generally pleasant, hardly ever complains, and is just here to heal and glam or 2. Snarly Saltqueen, always complaining about everything and telling everyone to shut up and stop taking damage.

Problem is, neither of these stereotypes is conducive to being taken seriously. If the population sees you as the first, they just kind of...gloss over whatever you were complaining about because it was an anomaly. Or if you do it too much, they recategorize you as #2, and pfffffff 2 just complains about everything there's no reason to take them seriously.

I genuinely believe healer is the hardest role in an MMO to get momentum on just because most people don't care about them, so their mains' complaints get distorted by such perceptions.

Funny, cos after enough people who aren't actually a 2, get labelled as a 2 and ignored, and they leave the role because they're ignored so much, THEN people decide to pay attention. When it starts affecting THEM and THEIR fill times for stuff in PF.

I really hope something gets asked about it at PAX, we're still far enough out from the expansion for some solid design direction changes (if they don't yet realize the scale of the changes needed, somehow). And if a question is asked about it and the response is a meek middling 'we will look at the data' or any variation of 'we think this design we are doing now will work so we will continue with it' I hope to several gods that people in the crowd will boo the hell out of them and cause a PR nightmare about it to force their hand on the matter

[Allegor]

Funny, cos after enough people who aren't actually a 2, get labelled as a 2 and ignored, and they leave the role because they're ignored so much, THEN people decide to pay attention. When it starts affecting THEM and THEIR fill times for stuff in PF.

And that's exactly the problem. The healer role, from casual to endgame level, isn't currently designed for people who like to play healer/support roles, they're designed for people who don't want to play one but are either "taking one for the team" or just want faster queues/to be carried.

[Osmond]

As I’ve read these posts. Those abilities never ever coming back as much I want to as a healer. Sure, I would love for shadowflare to come back. I might want SCH’s DoTs to return. There’s no way in hell I want that back. To keep up with multiple durations and mitigate and heal? Screw that noise. I like the current version of SCH. Give less button bloat, merge effects in 1 button. Want cleric stance back? Just put it in their 2mins. that buffs their healing potency. Want protect/stone skin back? Here, we buffed the % on the shields.

The more I think about solutions, the more dumb it gets because it ends up getting worse. I believe the team knows something is wrong, yet so late in the expansion to do anything. Band-aid maybe. Can’t see them doing anything until 7.0.

[ForsakenRoe]

Issue with that is that WHM doesn't have shields, outside of Benison. The reason people want Stoneskin is because it's a GCD option for shielding that isn't limited by CDs. If it were SCH or SGE then it'd be a different story

And cleric being tied to their 2min makes it the same as Assize: ignored, pointless, just a 'side effect' of the 'more damage' button.

[Semirhage]

Even the Sylphie arguing gets samey. It happens every few months- someone who "plays a HEALer to HEAL", "hate(s) damage rotations", "like(s) healers the way they are", wanders into these subforums. They start off with a summary dismissal of all issues discussed in this section of the forums. Then, when they get a snarky reply, it's immediately on passive-aggressive bullshit, walls of text, You're All So Mean, All I Ask Is For ONE Healer To Be Boring And Terrible, and any opinion to the contrary is unbearable cruelty. The Sylphie shrieks in pain as it strikes at your complaints. I fundamentally disagree with the Sylphietron 9000's philosophy on game design, approach to what constitutes "fun", and assessment on the impact of their design template as applied to a role's balance. And now the latest one is boohooing in the tank subforum because any dissent in the healer forums gets attacked by mean grumpy evil people who hate fun and happiness.

It's all so tiresome.

[Osmond]

Issue with that is that WHM doesn't have shields, outside of Benison. The reason people want Stoneskin is because it's a GCD option for shielding that isn't limited by CDs. If it were SCH or SGE then it'd be a different story

And cleric being tied to their 2min makes it the same as Assize: ignored, pointless, just a 'side effect' of the 'more damage' button.

It’s why I said that the more ppl cry for solutions, the dumber it gets lol. I couldn’t make solutions even if I tried. I just look at why the devs made these kits the way it is and why they thought it was a good idea.