Delete rescue from the game.

[Renathras]

No its not, proof:
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Those differences you mention aren't enough to make the jobs feel different,
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Even tanks as homgenized as they are are far more different than those 2, just look at any 2 tanks and you'll se how they aren't even close.

Okay, I know you guys hate me saying this, but it needs to be said:

This is subjective.

I don't mean the number of casts, that's objective. I mean the feel. Any time you use the word feel, you're speaking in subjective terms. I've read through the results of the long-form surveys on Reddit. While there are a lot of disappointed people (results of the satisfied/dissatisfied question here:

Note that the scaling is done from 1-9 instead of 1-10 since Ty's system is weird, so the net ratings are actually higher if you change the 9 to 10, but this is "looking at it in the worst way possible" - it's also not broken down into individual Jobs, and keep in mind the three notes listed... ), there are a lot of satisfied ones that talk about how DIFFERENT the Healer Jobs feel to them.

Conversely, hop over to the Tank forum. They've been complaining ever since the 6.3 PLD rework that PLD now feels just like GNB (or WAR, depending on who you ask), and that DRK feels just like WAR, and that all the Tanks are samey and feel alike because they just have the same 1-2-3 rotation, with some gimmick -4 or equivalent, and that their mitigation toolkits feel identical.

...I disagree with them, too, mind you, but the point is, you're speaking for yourself - AND for those that think like you - but not for everyone. There seem to be a lot of people who describe all the Healers as feeling very different to play. I would wager this is because some players put more emphasis on the healing side of things and others the DPSing side of things, with the former feeling different and the latter feeling they're the same.

It woudn't and honestly I feel that it should be obvious why its not but to summarize

You list a lot of things but don't really substantiate them.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to), then say "losing literally every kind of GCD and cooldown optimization whatsoever" but don't explain how or why you're losing these and what these optimizations are that you're losing. Like...what are you losing here? The only optimization you're losing is that of using downtime shields so Toxicon isn't damage neutral (which is clunk, not clever mechanics) and...what? If you're trying to stock the Toxicons for burst, it means you're trying to avoid them as a movement tool, not use them more for one (so you're gaining ceiling/optimization there, not losing it), you can use GCD heals for movement optimization in place of Toxicon, I guess? But since the Toxicons you gain are for burst and you're trying not to overcap them otherwise, that should still be a net increase in the skill ceiling. You say it will shrink the gap between ceiling and floor, but don't explain how it's supposedly doing so.

You are correct on increasing the RNG reliance, but it's more increasing the buff window reliance. If this is bad, then every DPS and Tank Job in the game right now are bad because they all do this.

You say it's disencouraging[sic] job knowledge...but don't explain how. Fully optimizing SGE's burst under this model would require MORE Job knowledge, not less! You'd want to stock Toxicons and Plegmas for burst windows, have the raid awareness to know when those start, and ensure you land all three Toxicons and your two Plegmas in the burst window. That already would be a higher skill ceiling than what SGE's damage rotation has going for it now, would it not? And you would still be rewarded (provided you haven't overcapped Addersting) for downtime shielding. You'd be rewarded for knowing when you NEED to shield so you could optimize around that to use those Toxicons for movement (knowing you'll have more than 3 by the burst window and so need to burn some) instead of Plegma, ensuring a good player is stocking the Plegmas (2) for the burst window while a less optimized player would be using Plegmas instead and have a lower burst output and thus lower overall output.

Everything I can think of has this rewarding Job and kit knowledge as well as encounter knowledge. You're going to have to explain to me how this isn't so, because I'm not seeing it here.

I think what you're trying to say is people can more freely shield (but that's a trap if they dry out their MP) and that if they use Toxicon outside of burst it's a DPS loss but gives them more movement or something? But that wouldn't be optimizing, and thus is an example of widening the skill ceiling from the floor, since the lower skilled player wouldn't be optimizing there while the higher skilled one would be.

I do agree on that but didn't want to talk about that cause Sch is its own can of worms and is honestly another topic that could fill pages easily

Fair enough, though I suspect we might agree more on THAT topic than this one.

but its undeniable that is dpsing side is the same as the existing healers had, its job mechanics are not unique and its main way of healing is a carbon copy of a pre existing job

It is, in fact, deniable, as it's DPSing side isn't identical to any other Job. The only case that's absolutely true of is SCH and AST (since SCH arguably doesn't use Ruin 2). The question is how distinct they are (not very), not if they're identical ("the same").

It's Job mechanics are unique, but they're pretty similar to SCH's. Their Addersgall is generated differently, they have Addersting instead of Energy Drain (which is also generated differently), their splash heal works differently (arguably better), and their oGCD kit aside from Aetherflow/Addersgall is distinct (and arguably better as well) than SCH's. The fact remains that in all three surveys (Ty's and my two long form ones), SGE is the most praised Healer Job while SCH (in the long form) is pretty derided (only AST is worse), and in Ty's, SCH gets lower marks than SGE. Clearly people are seeing some distinction, otherwise they'd be rating them the same (in Ty's) and talking about them the same (in mine) where people aren't.

One of the most common things said in the long form surveys is "I really like WHM and SGE, but I don't like SCH since it's like a worse SGE and I really don't like AST" or some variation on that theme.

EDIT2:

I'd see the meleeing aspect of a healer akin to WHM's Lilies, you're DPSing whilst also healing and pocketing further resources for down the line. As long as it's melee focus was a means to generate resources whilst functioning optimally I think it'd be fine. Times where it was forced out of range could be taken as moments to spend said resources in optimised play, not to mention that boss hitboxes are so huge these days that you can smack them from deepest Narnia anyway. I don't think it would be a problem now in the same way it would have been back in 2.x-4.x.

Watch some world prog team Savage PoVs on YouTube. It's kind of surprising how little time you need to spend out of cane slap range.

Yeah fair.

I guess I should say this more like "in older content", but as I've said to you guys, older content doesn't matter, so...

You know what? Sure. Bring on the melee Healer.

Hm...Onimaiju...or whatever the thing that [SPOILER] from the Ranged Physical EW Role quest is. I'm not sure what it was, but like the shrine priest thing. Could have a playstyle slapping sacred suchers(sp?) on things like Miroku from Inuyasha. Honestly, I'd be fine with a melee Healer then. I wouldn't play it, but could be the candidate for the WAR 1-2-3 -4 combo system.

[WaxSw]

Okay, I know you guys hate me saying this, but it needs to be said:

This is subjective.

Those logs, are numbers, there is absolutely nothing subjectve in numbers, both almost copies 1 to 1, similar casts, similar cpm, similar % of total actions... there is absolutely no argument that can deny it.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to), then say "losing literally every kind of GCD and cooldown optimization whatsoever" but don't explain how or why you're losing these and what these optimizations are that you're losing.

Brief explanation, I thought it was not necessary

Healers 101 and why GCDs are to be minimized: GCD heals are a damage loss because while you cast them you cannot attack. This means that why they are reliable in the way that you can use them anytime they have poor eficiency because every GCD used is a loss of (insert potency of the standard nuke) potency, this is very positive in the big picture because healers also have oGCDs (and in the case of WHM limited damage neutral GCDs). oGCDs are strong tools that allow us to heal without getting in the way of dpsing or even increasing it and thus have better efficiency, Why did I say earlier that GCDs having lower eficiency than those oGCDs is a positive thing then? Because oGCDs are limited, they are tied to either a time based cooldown and/or a resource exclusive of the job and have deeper interactions than the GCDs, this basically means in order for healer to maximize their damage output they are forced to interact with those different and more limited resources while having the GCD as a safety net, think of it like the small wheels you put as a child on a bicycle while learning, they increase your safety at the cost of having a limitation in mobility and speed, GCD heals (with the exception of afflatus) work like that they provide better safety at the cost of MP and Dps and in the same way of the small wheels you remove them as you learn.

What you propose by increasing the damage increase of toxicon to the point that it becomes damage neutral is removing the efficiency penalty to the GCDs and making them equal to the oGCDs, and thus shrinking the difference between ceiling and floor because all that potency that was lost in safe-but-not-needed shielding from healers that do not know really how strong is their kit is not lost anymore, they would deal per GCD the same potency as someone who stretch their kit to their absolute limit.

You are correct on increasing the RNG reliance, but it's more increasing the buff window reliance. If this is bad, then every DPS and Tank Job in the game right now are bad because they all do this.

Welcome to one of the reasons why everyone fucking hates the 2 minute meta and why in raiding scenarios damage now is more swingy than ever xD

You say it's disencouraging[sic] job knowledge...but don't explain how. Everything I can think of has this rewarding Job and kit knowledge as well as encounter knowledge. You're going to have to explain to me how this isn't so, because I'm not seeing it here.

Because with a damage neutral toxicon no one really has to know the extent they can push the rest of their tools that are not GCDs to deal more damage, there woudn't be any more "I'm gonna use holos 14s before the beggining so it covers and comes back at X time in the fight for Y mechanic so I squeeze 1 more nuke instead of having to lose damage in a GCD heal" because that GCD heal woudn't be a damage loss anymore, this is a loss in both job knowledge (not enforced to know that holos can cover Y mechanic) and fight knowledge (no need to know that using holos at -14 allows it to come back for Y)

I think what you're trying to say is people can more freely shield (but that's a trap if they dry out their MP) and that if they use Toxicon outside of burst it's a DPS loss but gives them more movement or something

I think I explained in the first I'm just quoting this to ephasize that MP is not a relevant metric, basically every Bis set outside ultimate prog has 0 piety cause healers are just that mp efficient.

You say you gain optimization (which SHOULD increase the skill ceiling...), but then handwave that away as just a small difference (but don't say what the difference is now to compare it to)

Go FFLOGS, go to any savage fight you want and look at the difference in Adps and Rdps for a Sage at the 99 percentile. There you have how big playing into the buffs optimizes the damage and you're only increasing a % of it (spitballing numbers should be around 30%), and usually is around 200 dps-300dps so a 30% of that would be 60-100 dps gain here

Now do the same but compare the Rdps of a 99 percentile with the Rdps of a 70 or 60 sage, there you have how big is the healing optimization is and what a damage neutral toxicon would remove in almost its entirety. Should be around 1k dps, there is your comparision

It is, in fact, deniable, as it's DPSing side isn't identical to any other Job...

...Literally at least 65% of their casts through the whole fight are exactly the same and I'm leaving out assize and phlegma nor doing a damage only comparision cause I want to be nice. Those numbers do not lie

About the poll thing you're saying that Sge is the most liked, which is true, but at the same time in ty's poll minor rework is the most wanted option, its aproval is still below average and below median across jobs and only gets a 5 cause the numbers go from 1 to 10 not from 0 to 10

Not only that but I think you're missing that one of the things why people want to rework Sch is because from Shb onwards they decided to gut everything from its identity, we have a better iteration to compare it to but we lack that for Sge

[Tigore]

At first, I was commenting on Waxsw's suggestion, but I might as well comment on how the Sage felt VS. the White Mage for the current 4 mans.

AoEs do feel a bit different for both. WHM can place Regen on the tank and spam Holy with Assize in between. The 3 stuns on the enemies pretty much offers enough mitigation with high DPS present. Everything is almost dead when they become immune to the stuns. SGE instead uses Physis to increase heals, pop Haima / Panhaima with the Physis buff, then demolish the pack with Phlegma and Toxicon. I know Waxsw disagrees with the Diagnosis shield making addersting procs damage neutral, but it feels like I can kind of do that for AoEs currently. Dyskrasia only starts to get used when the enemy count drops to around 3 ... Which is a very small time frame.

For single target bosses .... Pretty much the graphs that Waxsw linked is my feeling. SGE is another Glare Mage using a different name. The counter to AoE damage is Assize + Afflatus Rapture VS. Physis + Kerachole. Tank busters would be Regen + Divine Benson VS. Taurochole with Kardia mending the rest. Additional Aquaveil VS. Diagnosis shield if the tank is getting hit by a truck which is not often for geared tanks.