Wesk Alber's poll on Jobs

[Sebazy]

Are there really that many healer mains playing at Savage level that aren’t willing to flex their job within the role though? Especially in this era with how homogenised everything is, that just seems odd to me.

[Renathras]

Are there really that many healer mains playing at Savage level that aren’t willing to flex their job within the role though? Especially in this era with how homogenised everything is, that just seems odd to me.

Probably more than you might think. This is also true of other similar roles like Tanks.

For all the talk of Healers being identical, even the two closest, SCH and SGE, aren't. Both of them play pretty differently than WHM does. And all three play differently than AST does. From a 100,000,000 ft view, they're all "nearly identical", but from up close, they're very different.

As discussed in this thread, SGE is a much more mobile and smooth version of SCH. SCH has more power, but has to jump through more hoops to use it. For example, SGE can press Zoe then Eukrsia Prognosis then Holos or Panhamia (or both...), but basically 3-5 button presses, less than two GCDs in duration, making it extremely responsive. Oh, and the collective one GCD in there, Eukrasia Prognosis, is entirely instant casts so mobile. If you lead into this with Eukrasia Dosis or Toxicon or Plegma, you have 2 GCDs before Eukrasia (Zoe and either of Holos or Panhamia), and one after Prognosis (the other of Holos or Panhamia if you want it). Oh, and did I mention you can also layer a Kerachole on the front of that Plegma if you want? Because you can.

Contrast with SCH. While you CAN make a far stronger barrier, this is going to require some setup. You're going to want Recitation before Adlo, and Adlo is a hardcast. You CAN blow Swiftcast on it, but that's an additional oGCD weave on the front end. You need to be smart about who you use the Adlo on, though, so the shield isn't consumed before you spread it. You then have to weave Deployment Tactics on the back end. This also will clip, and there's no avoiding this unless you weave it after the next spell cast, and it's Biolysis or Ruin 2 OR you Swiftcasted the Adlo, in which case you had to double weave before or use the Recitation before even that GCD. You also can use Protraction on the target to boost the size of the shield. You will also possibly want to use Dissipation before this, so you need to make sure you aren't overcapping your AF, so before that you'll have needed to use excess AF. Maybe one weave from Soil, but depending on how recent your last Aetherflow refresh is, you may have up to 3 charges you need to burn first. Alternatively, you can forego Dissipation if you want to use Seraph, but you'll need to weave Seraph a few GCDs early so she can get over her summoning sickness to cast Consolation. But if you're using Fey/Seraphic Illumination, you'll need to make sure to do that BEFORE all that so it doesn't get ghosted as Eos departs and Seraph comes in, or you'll need to do it after she comes in, in which case you have to wait for her to come in, have summoning sickness, then cast Illumination BEFORE you cast the Adlo. And with all that done, NOW you can hit Deployment Tactics on your target that hopefully still has most/all of the shield and is centrally positioned in the party (though this is WAY less of an issue than it used to be), and congratulations, you now have the strongest defensive protection for your party in the game. Oh, and don't forget you also need to make sure you're hitting Chain Strategem on CD and you have some extra random abilities like Excogitation and Aetherpact and Whispering Dawn and Fey Blessing you can throw around if you need to. Oh, and you DID remember to preplace Eos/Seraph in a place where the party's benefitting from all her abilities for this mechanic, right? And if you need yet more protection - Expedience DOES have that damage mitigation in addition to that movement speed...

That is, of course, the over the top version, and you can do far less, but the point is that SCH has a lot more going on in how it's thinking and approaching these problems. SGE is a Barrier Healer and so has some proactive stuff going on with it, but it's far less and the abilities don't have "waiting times" or "lag times", making it much more sharp and responsive, though it pays for this by being weaker...but it's still completely sufficient for the task (no encounter will be designed to require an Infinity Gauntlet powered Spreadlo, otherwise it wouldn't be clearable for parties without a SCH, and that's not happening). Moreover, SGE's direct healing spells are more accessible and often more potent than SCH's. Zoe + Pneuma is Cure 3 levels of healing, and Physis is an oGCD Medica 2 that also boosts healing further. A single button press that does Fey Blessing + Whispering Dawn + (part of) Fey Illumination, and does so without ghosting or Eos lag time issues. And unlike SCH, SGE is incentivized to burn AG, meaning Kerochole is something you can use frequently for even more mitigation and healing while SCH is having to decide if it wants to sacrifice (a pitiful amount of) potency in order to access a ground placed version of the same effect.

...and these are the two Healer Jobs that play THE MOST alike.

WHM is completely different on one side of that, and AST is completely different on the other. Essential Dignity is actually used (unlike Lustrate and Durochole) as a spot heal, for example, and AST has a "healing plan backbone/scaffolding" in the form of Earthly Star. Some of its abilities have lag times that you want to factor into, such as Star and Macrocosmos. Essential Dignity is the spot oGCD with the most room for optimization (using it as close to 30% or less health on the target as possible, obviously without waiting for them to die, to increase its value). It MIGHT (or might NOT) have Lady up for additional healing (on par with Assize), but that's also yet another thing to keep pressing on CD (Minor Arcana draw) and react to/track. It has some powerful but niche spells that many people don't even use (Synastry, for example), can put on a Barrier Healer cap for about half a minute with Neutral Sect (once per 2 mins) and Collective (once per minute). And all this is going on with it maintaining Draw and Play with a cadence of 3 per 2 min and 1 at the 1 min mark in between, possibly trying to optimize with Redraw, keeping Divination on CD every 2 mins, and using Astrodyne at 3 played cards and not overcapping seals.

On the other hand, WHM is pretty much using Assize on CD, using Rapture (boosted by Plenary once per minute if a bit of extra healing is needed) for most healing, Asylum if it needs more, Tetra/Benison if it needs spot healing, and tapping Temperance for big damage needs or Lilybell for the "several waves of damage" stack marker. And if all that SOMEhow fails, it just falls back on Medica 2 and then Medica 1 or Cure 3 spam. It would have difficult to make WHM more different than AST if you tried.

.

The Healers are only really similar in their damage kits. Their healing kits really are quite distinct and in some cases, all over the place, depending on what you're trying to do with them. Their damage kits are very similar (though not identical, with SGE and SCH both having different optimizations based on the GCD/oGCD + resource respectively), but while you can find parallels with various abilities (Eukrasia Prognosis is KIND of like Succor...if Succor was two buttons that were a mini 1 sec and 1.5 sec GCD and also instant cast...), most still work differently, and some are combinations of various other things.

A lot of people look at THOSE differences and are scared off by them. SGE to SCH or SCH to SGE is still a transition. There are a lot of things that work similarly, but again, you have weirdness like Physis 2 vs Whispering/Blessing/Illumination, and that SGE's optimization doesn't require foregoing Addersgall abilities, but rather (over?)using them. And the transition from WHM to AST or AST to WHM might as well be asking someone to learn a different role. Trying to pick up AST more these days, but it's pretty foreign to me. WHM doesn't have any "use on CD once per minute but wait at least 10 sec before detonating" ability like Earthly Star, nor does it have anything like Collective Unconscious or Neutral Sect in form or function. Solace/Rapture are GCDs, and you actually DO want to use those. Assize is a fire and forget on CD that, if it does useful healing, great, but if it doesn't, well, you weren't using it for that anyway (most of the time) unless it only pushed back using it by 5-10 sec or less, and even then, only a couple times in a fight (if you're forced to lose a use over the fight, it's a damage loss, of course, and thus not optimizing).

WHM < SGE < SCH =?= AST is the difficulty chart for a reason. And it isn't because their damage spells are too different. Those differences that exist in the healing kits are stark enough to people who are focused on them (which a lot of people are) that it turns people off of trying the different ones.

So while an expert who is used to the different names/icons (or set their bars up where Kerochole is where Soil is, etc), they may not be very different.

But when it comes to players that have one Healer and are debating leveling and playing another, or maybe have another leveled but never really use it (and maybe leveled it via Frontlines or something), those are big differences that feel very big and very real to them. I think in all the statements of how Healers are similar in their DPS kit and that their heals tend to have similar RESULTS (Essential Dignity and Solace/Tetra tend to have similar end results when used), what is lost there is how people that don't already see things that way DON'T see them that way.

[Sebazy]

Probably more than you might think. This is also true of other similar roles like Tanks.

<snip>

Is this perhaps more of a stance you'll see from fringe case healer mains that are somewhere between Extreme and Savage in terms of regular progression?

My person experience over the years is mostly akin to Rein. Even the most stubborn set in their way healer mains will usually have a second pick. Generally, the more hardcore you go, the more flexible you get to the point where you end up with monsters that can jump on just about any viable job and prog/clear anything with it.

[ForsakenRoe]

Generally, the more hardcore you go, the more flexible you get to the point where you end up with monsters that can jump on just about any viable job and prog/clear anything with it.

This is basically where I'm at. I can play all 4 healers to varying success levels in Savage, and started this tier as SCH, but ended up on WHM again after joining a group who had a SGE onetrick. I could play AST. I just didn't feel like giving myself carpal tunnel doing Superchain over and over in prog, so WHM it was. If there were a mechanic that was 'instantly deleteable' with Macrocosmos again, like P3S, I'd be on AST in a flash regardless of the pain. In fact, I have zero WHM clears of P3S for this very reason

I think it's cos I PF a lot during prog, being able to swap between healers means more opportunities open up in terms of what parties you can join. If you're a WHM onetrick and the PF's full of 'LF 1 Barrier healer', you can't do much, but if you're able to flex SGE as well, then suddenly all those parties are open to you

[Renathras]

...

I mean, I don't know personally. I actually fit Snow's description of a SCH main (will flex to all other healers but prefer AST the least), though I more consider myself a WHM main, personally, there's probably something to that.

I feel like a lot of people will flex to a second one, but not necessarily any more than that. My experience with PF is that I'm often the only Healer that will or even can flex. Others often don't even have a second Healer Job leveled. Though most who have more than one have WHM + something (usually SGE), and are okay swapping between those if it's needed, though they don't prefer it.

I feel this is a case of the company you keep, maybe. Like I'd guess you tend to run into a lot more hardcore Savage/Ultimate people whereas I tend to run into a lot more low-to-midcore Savage/Extreme/toe dipping people.

I can play all Healers that aren't AST in any content. I can probably play AST in Extremes, I just feel competent with it and over-weave all over the place in the burst window. While that's PROBABLY only a negligible damage loss, it /feelsbad, so I stick with only doing 4/24 mans or 8 man normals with it when I get the itch, which isn't often.

[Absurdity]

Are there really that many healer mains playing at Savage level that aren’t willing to flex their job within the role though? Especially in this era with how homogenised everything is, that just seems odd to me.

I can absolutely see people not wanting to flex AST specifically simply due to how scuffed their 2-minute window is.
We had to pug a healer in Asphodelos every week and you could quickly see a pattern forming for every pug AST we got, massive GCD clipping during buff windows, we had people quad and octa weaving quite regularly.

So if I were a healer main and saw myself struggling this hard with executing AST properly I would decide that I'm simply not good enough for the job and not play it. I can just play something else that I perform well on.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Are there really that many healer mains playing at Savage level that aren’t willing to flex their job within the role though? Especially in this era with how homogenised everything is, that just seems odd to me.

In ShB, I flex accordingly to what the PF doesn't have and/or what my first static co-healer felt like playing for each session.
In EW Asphodelos, I spent the first half of the tier's lifetime as an AST 'main' because my previous static co-healer wants to get into playing SGE. He eventually decides it's not for him and went back to being WHM, with me settling on SCH once again.
In EW Abyssos, I liked to 'meme' my static's reclear sessions by playing a 'healer roulette' (letting my static roll a dice to decide which healer I'm playing for the session). Never been as good as SCH but hey, ez clear is a clear.

Almost every healer mains that I know are willing to flex usually between 2 from 4 healers we have as of now. WHM & SGE are their most common pick unironically. The only healer main that I know as of now who's unwilling to flex to other healer is my current cohealer. At first he had an interest to learn AST, but quickly turned off by the carpa tunnel inducing reopeners.