A question for SCH mains and enjoyers

[ForsakenRoe]

-AST is a Healer, though its primary gauge is buff related. You can say those buffs relate to damage, but as people constantly say, they preferred when the buffs WEREN'T that, so I don't think that's a solid position. WAR/DRK/GNB aren't Healers. As someone said in that thread Ty posted in the Tank section, the difference is that Tanks' job is related to damage (damage builds agro, and AT LEAST IN THEORY, a Tank's job is building agro). While it's true they could just make abilities that generate agro, they did that before and the playerbase just did weird things. Besides, there is a class that has "damage turns into healing". It's called SGE.

-Again, what is the point of ED even existing in your proposal? It's just MORE CLUNK (the thing we need less of with SCH, not more) to give SCH a more damage focus.

- Your "quite a banger of a job" is literally current WHM with Aero 3. That's the only difference.

Just gonna focus on these bits

- My point is that, despite being 'not a DPS class', these jobs listed have gauges entirely dedicated to 'deal damage'. Trying to go 'yeh but' with the reasoning that 'it doesnt count for tanks because they're not healers' is comically flimsy. I even said, sarcastically, that 'the 'damage generates threat' argument' is not gonna cut it, because threat no longer exists as a mechanic we play around due to the sheer power of tankstance multipliers but you went for it anyway

- It gives options? You might find it hard to believe, but the choice between 'dump all EDs in raidbuffs for marginal damage gain' versus 'hold onto some EDs, to use as a weave after a Ruin2 to recoup the potency lost due to movement' is not 'clunk' to some people. Might be to you, but I'd call half of what you consider 'fun engaging gameplay' to be clunky as hell, too

- Having an extra button, even if it's only pressed a couple of times per minute, still has an effect on how the class feels to play. A3 got used in AOE pulls too, filling that dead GCD you have where the Holy stun lasts 4s but your next cast overwrites 1.5s of that stun, and iirc had a cast time equal to the GCD, meaning it put a constraint on mobility unless swiftcasted, which you won't have for all of them, which adds depth (or clunk, as you call it). Though knowing SE they'd reduce that to 1.5s too

[ty_taurus]

It does. But it requires a cost benefit analysis.

There will always be players who are upset with change, but there will also be players who will be upset when you don't change. Sometimes, you just gotta do what's right for the game even if it's going to upset some people. It would be better for the longevity of the game. Most reworks did more good than harm. It's only Summoner that failed. If they had the ability to take feedback and use that to address Summoner's concerns, than it could ultimately be for the better.

It is interesting that they take the opposite approach to you guys and their approach is the Tank equivalent to mine. They don't want more DPS or Damage leaning to their Jobs.

WHAT! You're telling me that the role that continues to get new and healthy additions to their DPS toolkit every expansion aren't complaining about not getting enough DPS tools? This is a revolutionary discovery! Next you're gonna tell me that people with access to well-stocked grocery stores and farmers markets aren't complaining about local food shortages.

It's not.

It really is though, and if nothing changes, it will hurt the game eventually. If it wasn't a problem you wouldn't have the constant negative feedback. If healers were just as well designed as all the DPS jobs, then show me some receipts. Show me walls of forum threats about the terrible state of Black Mage, of Dancer, of Reaper, etc. Not every DPS job is perfect, but show me a forum exclusively filled with backlash for dozens of pages for the last 4 years. Show it to me. Where is it?

[ForsakenRoe]

WHAT! You're telling me that the role that continues to get new and healthy additions to their DPS toolkit every expansion aren't complaining about not getting enough DPS tools? This is a revolutionary discovery!

I'm guessing that, if PLD changed to just Atonement spam, and a Goring every 30s, but the role got back it's tank stuff like positioning boss, actually managing threat levels, etc, most of said tanks would be like 'why did they take our damage moves, instead of just giving back the aggro management aspects? Did SE think we're too stupid to handle both at once?' In a vacuum yeh, the tank players want tank role gameplay back, but not at the cost of the damage rotations they currently have. I'd bet real money on that one. Which leads us to where we are atm with healers, where we have neither a sufficient amount of 'healer role gameplay', nor an actual downtime rotation for when we don't engage in 'healer role gameplay'. Ideally we get both, but we won't get that, so I (and presumably at least a couple others) have settled on 'well lets have one of the two', and I'm asking for the one that:

- doesn't suddenly screw casuals over with it's implementation
- doesn't conflict with old content design because of the changes it brings (UWU's already debatably easier to execute than some Savage fights, let's not kill it even more)
- is a lot less punishing if you mess up while re-learning how the role plays (since it's going to play differently either way)
- probably takes a lot less dev time since half the assets are already in the game still
- has the most apparent 'difference in gameplay feel' to the average player compared to the alternative
- opens up design options for things like 'dealing damage helps generate free healing tools', which I find better than the current opposite we have of 'purposely overheal with Lilies to get Misery's for raidbuff windows'

Anyone saying they want 'more healing' has to be able to keep up with that new healing amount. And a lot won't be able to. As much of a meme as the line was, 'they think they do, but they don't.' If there's gonna be a bump up in healing required, I'd expect it to be a pretty big jump, to make it interesting for anyone who does Savage or beyond. We have to keep in mind, the point is that ALL content is drab as a healer, not just the hard stuff. It needs to be a solution that affects Extreme Roulette and Savage Week 1 alike. And if Aetherfont and the like suddenly end up with 'you have to heal like it's P10S Harrowing Hell', and I don't think Johnny Freetrial in Stormblood's keeping up with that one. Well, maybe the community accepted solution would end up being 'cheese with tank LB'

Not every DPS job is perfect, but show me a forum exclusively filled with backlash for dozens of pages for the last 4 years. Show it to me. Where is it?

There was a lot of MCH doomposting for 3 years, but that was less about the SHB redesign and more the fact that SE just didn't bother to give the class the balance checks it needed, leaving it to get outscaled by it's counterparts at an alarming speed. As for reworks that are 'regarded as good' (after the initial kneejerk):

-WHM Lilies (specifically the Lilies)
-NIN GCD Mudras
-NIN Fleeting/Forked being made a choice instead of a combo
-MCH 5.0
-MNK Masterful Blitz
-BRD Bowmage removal in 4.0
-BLM 3.0 (after the teething issues of 'enochian is ridiculously hard to keep going', it's the basis of the gameplay we still use today)
-SAM Tsubame addition (shifted from the Hagakure focused gameplay to a static 60s loop, if Kaiten's removal counts, this does too)

and the ones regarded as bad/meh:

-healers in general losing their damage skills
-MCH 4.0
-NIN Mug/Trick swap
-SAM Kaiten removal
-PLD 6.3 (most seem to have settled on 'its kinda just meh')
-DRK 5.0 (most seem to have settled on 'its just kinda WAR 2')
-BRD's decline into the state it's in now (idk what moment even caused it to end up how it is), and also the original BowMage implementation in 3.0
-SMN SMN SMN

Very 50/50 on whether they hit or miss from what I've seen over the years, which means that on average, one of the two out of DRG or AST is gonna slap, and one's gonna be awful. And since we know SE does not have any healer mains on the design team, I know which I'm expecting to be the stinker

[ty_taurus]

There was a lot of MCH doomposting for 3 years, but that was less about the SHB redesign and more the fact that SE just didn't bother to give the class the balance checks it needed, leaving it to get outscaled by it's counterparts at an alarming speed. As for reworks that are 'regarded as good' (after the initial kneejerk):

Exactly. There are DPS jobs that get heat, but a lot of that heat is in relation to balance issues, not design. Red Mage continues to get a lot of criticism, but that criticism has nothing to do with its general rotation and gameplay and everything to do with the design team's insistence of heavily taxing jobs for range, mobility, and utility, far more than necessary. They're not asking for a rework of the job, just that they properly balance its damage output. The gap between Black Mage and Red Mage is a gap of like 800-1000 damage a second which is insane. Red Mage just needs that gap to be smaller.

[Renathras]

Just gonna focus on these bits

- It's not flimsy, it's reality. That it's largely irrelevant doesn't change the fact if a Tank doesn't hit any button but Provoke on CD, they will not maintain threat. It's kind of like noting that a SGE spamming Dosis IS healing because of how Kardia works. Dosis is a healing spell. So is Assize. The argument here is that encounter design/combat mechanics have changed, but perhaps they should not have.

- "It gives options?" How does "You can only use AF on ED" "give us options"? Only being able to use one ability isn't an option in any definition. Now, if you mean "you can use Soil and Excog and such without a damage loss", the equally valid and probably better solution would be to just remove Energy Drain and increase Broil's potency to make up for it. Upping Broil's potency by 10 or 15 would accomplish this, and now you have the options of what to use AF on. Alternatively, we could remove AF as a resource, have Faerie Gauge generate 30 every 1 min when you press the AF button. Now you don't need an "AF dump" since it can stack to 100, meaning you have over 3 minutes to use stacks, and now you actually want to use AFFG abilities. That's both less clunk and achieves the same goal in a better way. (Also, you can call what I think is fun and engaging "boring", but "clunky"? The only one of my proposals that could at all be clunky MIGHT be the SGE one. And ironically, that's more what most of you guys would prefer it be over what it is today...)

- Then make it something else? Miasma an instant cast GCD with a 20 sec CD that does Boil + 100 potency of damage and stacks to 3. There, I fixed the problem for you. Alternatively, if you prefer, we could make it a instant cast GCD with a 20 sec duration DoT that does a total Broil + 100 potency of damage. Either one achieves the same basic goal and does so more efficiently and more logically.

EDIT:

Agreed with this, though:

Very 50/50 on whether they hit or miss from what I've seen over the years, which means that on average, one of the two out of DRG or AST is gonna slap, and one's gonna be awful. And since we know SE does not have any healer mains on the design team, I know which I'm expecting to be the stinker

[ty_taurus]

- It's not flimsy, it's reality. That it's largely irrelevant doesn't change the fact if a Tank doesn't hit any button but Provoke on CD, they will not maintain threat. It's kind of like noting that a SGE spamming Dosis IS healing because of how Kardia works. Dosis is a healing spell. So is Assize. The argument here is that encounter design/combat mechanics have changed, but perhaps they should not have.

So bring back Flash for Paladin and give each Tank a flash equivalent:

Paladin: Flash
Warrior: Shout
Dark Knight: Horrify
Gunbreaker: Challenge

Each of these is an AoE GCD action that increases threat but does no damage. Now tanks can stop pretending to be DPS and just focus on tanking. While we're at it, we cut every DPS action except each tank's 1-2-3, but that 1-2-3 also reduces threat on your target, which is why you need to use Flash when main tanking.

[ForsakenRoe]

The best part of this is that you probably CAN keep threat on a boss by just using Provoke and autoattacking (probably don't even need the autoattacks). Back in SB it was found that you could keep threat by just using the 'circle shirk' to exponentially multiply threat, with how strong tankstance and Provoke's bonus threat are now I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible

Each of these is an AoE GCD action that increases threat but does no damage. Now tanks can stop pretending to be DPS and just focus on tanking. While we're at it, we cut every DPS action except each tank's 1-2-3, but that 1-2-3 also reduces threat on your target, which is why you need to use Flash when main tanking.

Funny you asked the tank forums 'would you like this' and got hit by 'this person should be ignored, very bad faith actor, they're just trying to create a healer discussion in disguise!', a very 'stop the count' moment

[vetch]

The best part of this is that you probably CAN keep threat on a boss by just using Provoke and autoattacking (probably don't even need the autoattacks). Back in SB it was found that you could keep threat by just using the 'circle shirk' to exponentially multiply threat, with how strong tankstance and Provoke's bonus threat are now I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible

IIRC, Provoke copies the top aggro and then generates an additional 2000 potency's worth of enmity, which is then multiplied by tank stance's 10X multiplier.

I don't know if that pseudo-potency is also multiplied by your strength or weapon damage or something, but I assume it is, since I do ranged attacks and provoke on longer pulls instead of an AoE because it usually holds threat to the end even against DPS who can burst on the run.

[ty_taurus]

Funny you asked the tank forums 'would you like this' and got hit by 'this person should be ignored, very bad faith actor, they're just trying to create a healer discussion in disguise!', a very 'stop the count' moment

I am the Ren of the Tank forums! Fear me!

[ForsakenRoe]

IIRC, Provoke copies the top aggro and then generates an additional 2000 potency's worth of enmity, which is then multiplied by tank stance's 10X multiplier.

I don't know if that pseudo-potency is also multiplied by your strength or weapon damage or something, but I assume it is, since I do ranged attacks and provoke on longer pulls instead of an AoE because it usually holds threat to the end even against DPS who can burst on the run.

If that's the case, then to steal aggro from a Provoke only tank, a DPS would have to do (2000 x 10) potency within the 25s before Provoke comes back off CD. Not 20000 damage, 20000 potency. Is there even a class in the game that does 20000 potency in a minute, let alone 25 seconds? I know from maths I did a while back that WHM is around 8000 per min, maybe 'burst phase in raidbuffs' is enough on an exceptionally 2min heavy class like DRK or such but yeh seems kinda difficult to reach to me