FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[ForsakenRoe]

Another weird one to me is Healers, but specifically the sub-breakdowns.

WHM has a lower approval than SCH (5.03 vs 5.24), but is more (as I said before) even across the board. That is, people feel less strongly about it in general in that it has no really lopsided "super high" and "super low" response values. It's kind of the "vanilla" of Healer Jobs; few people hate it, few people love it, most people find it acceptably un-obnoxious. Everything is in a pretty narrow band. But what really gets to me is the preferred version. 41.2% think Endwalker is the best iteration with 15.3% preferring ShB. The two were more or less identical, with the only significant changes being (a) Thin Air is now a 2 charge ability rather than a 15 sec duration CD, (b) Misery is now damage neutral instead of a minor DPS loss, (c) Assize has a slightly shorter CD of 40 sec instead of 45, (d) WHM now has Aquaveil as a targeted Rampart and Lilybell as a strong oGCD tool that is MOST useful (though not ONLY useful) for mulit-hit attacks that don't happen often. Overall, it was one of the least changed Jobs from ShB to EW, with most of the changes being well received.

Regardless, taken together, the post-SB/5.0 and on paradigm version of WHM (also perhaps known as the "post Aero 3 removal" versions) have a combined 56.5% approval. Further, "No Rework" (20%) + "Minor Rework" (37%) has a total of 57%, so on par with that.

But then look at SCH and AST.

SCH, in stark contrast to WHM, has 41.4% preferring SB (vs 15.3% for WHM) and a further 29.9% preferring HW. Taken together, that's a resounding 71.3% that prefer the HW/SB era. Only 2.3% preferred ShB, on par with the amount that preferred ARR. 46.8% want a "Major Rework", and when "Total Overhaul" (14.7%) is added in, that's 61.5% that want large changes to the Job, and clearly the SB iteration is VASTLY preferred. Only 9.2% want no rework and only 24.1%, a respectable minority but still a minority, prefer EW's incarnation of the Job the best. And unlike WHM, it can't lean on ShB's numbers to shore that up into a majority that like the post-SB paradigm.

AST is even more stark, and has the lowest approval (4.74). The prefer-SB version is ALREADY an outright majority of 55.6%. Adding in HW's 12.3% brings this up to 67.9%. Not quite SCH's 71.3%, but pretty high. Tellingly, there's not even a SINGLE vote for "No Rework" at this time, with "Major Rework" (45.0%) + "Total Overhaul" (29.0%) being a whopping 74% together.

It's pretty clear, despite SCH having a slightly higher approval rating than the "vanilla flavor" WHM that there's a strong desire for it to receive a significant rework back to something resembling the SB era, and AST's are desperate for a major shakeup as well.

WHMs, by contrast, seem to be relatively content, with a majority preferring the post-SB world (granted, SB WHM and the initial iteration of the "Lily" system...was pretty bad (the only era WHMs absolutely preferred less than SB was ARR; SB and ShB being tied at the moment) and wanting to see only minor changes to the Job (a lot of people seem to want Aero 3 and some mention more mitigation/party utility, but much beyond that is kind of vague).

And SGE, as a kind of "control group"(?), is oddly also the most popular (5.47), with 29.3% wanting "No Rework", 32.0% wanting a "Mini Rework" (together, these sum to 61.3%, a clear majority), vs 30.7% wanting a "Major Rework" and 8.0% wanting a "Total Overhaul" (taken together, 38.7%)

Personally, I assumed (and I'd bet many others did) that 'No rework' doesn't mean 'absolutely zero changes', but 'receives the usual expansion additions, but they match well with it's current playstyle', like how Despair slotted in to BLM's rotation as a Fire Phase ender and SingleTarget Flare. As such, I also see 'mini rework' as something akin to Monk losing GL in 5.4 or NIN Mudras becoming GCD in 5.1, 'major rework' as DRK going into 5.0 or WAR in 4.2, and 'total overhaul' would I guess be something like what happened to MCH going into 5.0, or SMN going into 6.0.

WHM being 'EW is the favorite' is not actually all that surprising when you consider that the class has been constantly dunked on meta-wise by AST since 3.4, and it's taken until EW to make the Lily system 'not completely awful'. If you look at the 'extra comments' sections you can see a lot of people saying they want more damage buttons. Like, I sort by 'I think EW is the best iteration' and this is what I get (some say 'more damage actions' further in to the cell where it goes offscreen, but you can see it by clicking the cell and looking at the formula bar at the top):

This tells me that people are answering that 'EW is the favorite' not because of the whole kit, but because it's healing side of things actually feels functional now. Anyway, point I'm trying to make is, I wouldn't group 'mini rework' and 'no rework' together to try and paint supermajorities. A LOT of people were not happy about NIN Mudras becoming GCD at the time, saying it'd kill the class, it'd be massive damage loss and they'd be locked out of PF, the usual doomsaying. It'd be like if I were to group up all the non-'no rework' votes, because all of the people in the other 3 categories are asking for 'changes that extend beyond just the usual expansion additions', so their views are more aligned than 'no rework' players and say, 'mini rework' players? Some of that group want things to change a little bit, some want it to stay as is.

Or if you prefer, we can just look at the middle, and group 'mini' and 'major reworks' together, and consider the 'no rework' and 'total overhaul' sections as 'the extremes'. Then WHM's at 59%. Which would imply a change 'a little bit bigger than a mini rework' is the solution that would sort-of satisfy the most players. See, we can't just use the face value of the data on the pretty charts or we draw conclusions favorable to a specific view. So we need to look at the extra details sections to find out why people are putting the answers they are. And it seems to me that the answer is 'they like that the Lily system doesn't screw the player over now, and that it's actually functional', but also 'they don't like how WHM has redundant tools eg Medica when you have Rapture, Regen forgotten about because of Solace, etc, and there's a lack of damage tools to use'. So the answer for SE would presumably be 'add a couple more DPS moves to the rotation eg Water and Aero3 on short CDs, and prune some of the old healing tools like merging Cure1 and Cure2, or Medica1 and Medica2'. People probably don't vote SB as their favorite because that was a time where WHM was getting actively locked out of PF on some DCs. I voted HW because I liked the MP management aspect of things back then, a skill that has been all but forgotten about with how healers can run base piety in every fight pretty comfortably

As an aside, I'd like to think the idea I posted a while ago would fall under that category, a change list that is 'more than mini, less than major', since it readded a few extra skills like Divine Seal or Protect, or added some Shielding Lily spenders. And a way to actually cast Flood so Y'shtola can stop monopolizing it. As such, with a couple of tweaks discussed in the interim since then (Protect upgrading to PI, for example) I think the data shows that 'something like that' would be the solution to aim for. No ego or anything honest. My list of SGE wants is definitely more leaning towards 'Major rework' territory though, and the numbers imply that it's a bit too much of a change all at once, so that one's off the table. Maybe just add a couple of select things, like Eukrasian Phlegma.

As for AST, the reason nobody voted 'no rework' is likely because we already know it's getting one. The question is how big a rework it gets. If I had to put money on it, I'd expect AST to get 'Major' and DRG to get 'Mini'. For comparison, I'd call what happened between SB and SHB to the AST cards 'total overhaul', and what happened from SHB to EW 'halfway between mini and major' (Astrodyne sucks). Which means that in order to qualify for at least 'major rework' territory, which the 'total overhaul' crowd will grumble about but likely eventually go 'well it's better than nothing' about, something more than just 'the cards are now GCD' has to occur. A lot more, in fact. 'Cards have different effects again' would be a start, making Minor Arcana actually interesting would be another, giving us something to do beyond Malefic spam is another. Any two out of those three would be enough to put it in 'major rework' mode and satisfy that big chunk of the playerbase. Which means SE will make cards GCD to alleviate the APM issue and go 'ta-da we fixed it pls clap'

Taking "Most people rate WHM a 5/10" to mean "WHM is enjoyable as-is!" is an...interpretation.

Wow, a class people find mediocre and don't really care about, how fun.

TBF, we're so inundated with 8/10 and 9/10 ratings in life that we see anything below a 7 as 'dog shit bad', despite the average of the rating system being a 5. Our brains have skewed towards the higher numbers, because of how readily available something better is. Why would I watch a movie on Netflix that is 5/10, when so many 9/10 ones are available? So I see the healers all getting 5/10 (except AST, get dunked card boy) and that's... ok I guess. But why settle for a 5/10 role when you could put your time into learning to master an 8.5/10 gigachad class like BLM? So rather than going 'ok healers are 'literally mid', that's fine' we should look for ways to get them up to being an 8/10 as well. And 'don't touch them' isn't going to magically gain them 3 points of approval rating. Still waters grow stagnant, the longer we leave them 'pretty much as is' the lower that number would drop. If we did this survey at this time next expansion, with the healers just getting 'upgrade to nuke skill (10 potency up) and a new OGCD healing tool we didn't actually need' like this expansion, I'd estimate that those numbers would be 3.5 at the highest (and for AST it'd be at like a 2). Thankfully we have the AST rework coming, but it remains to be seen what that'll be like. And considering the last 'rework' it got was what put it in this mess, I expect a lot more people than just me have a degree of pessimism about it

[IDontPetLalas]

When I interpret the results, all of the results show a majority of "no rework" for healers. Looks like as AST, you will have by far the worst experience soloing - absolutely unacceptable- (I would agree) , but all healers are roughly the same (meh) in casual and overall experience.

The revised spreadsheets are excellent it should put SE to shame - they should be the ones doing this and sharing it with us. Thank you!