I have to rant about AST cards

[vetch]

I don't believe FFXIV devs are separate from these forums. There are plenty of examples of the FFXIV team either reversing or making better changes. I mean BRD used to cast in Heavensward and that was reversed.

BRD's currently the least or 2nd least popular job after a spate of unpopular changes that weren't asked for.

Plus SMN is in a better position and now feels like you're a SMN instead of a DoT Mage.

Because you cast magic missiles for 90% of your GCDs now, instead of DoTs?

We just have to make our issues known, and they'll fix it. They've done it before. Maybe it's not as fast as we are used to with other dev teams, I do admit that, but the FFXIV team listen to us and always have.

Samurai have been making their complaints over Kaiten's removal harming job flavor for a year now and have received dead silence. Why? Because Yoshi&co wanted the button space to add a discrete AoE version of Shoha to encourage players to use more AoE in dungeons, and won't back down. Something that could have been handled by adding a new auto-translate phrase instead.

Healers asked for more engagement and received a reduction and dismissal in the form of "we understand some people want Heavensward healer design to return but we won't do it", or get told to play Ultimates (despite that they were asking about engagement across all levels of content, not for more difficulty, and despite that Ultimates don't ask for heavier healing, only more precision).

'Making our issues known' doesn't do anything if our desires go against whatever design flight of fancy the devs are currently chasing.

[Sebazy]

Sadly SE will never win in this case. Back when healers were different AST/SCH were supreme. As Astro had crazy aoe card buffs and sch fairy was ridiculously op and you could use the fairy skills while using other skills. Whm was left in the dust and even ousted from party finder during some raids.

That's an unfair oversimplification IMO as that certainly wasn't the case in HW at least as far as AST vs WHM was concerned (SCH was indeed king though).

3.0 AST was obviously way undertuned and not in any shape ready to tackle Gordias, remember that it's issues weren't as simple as 'Balance wasn't strong enough yet and it's heals were weak'. It ran out of MP faster than WHM, it had horrific enmity issues that were hilariously even worse still and it was tripping over it's GCD trying to weave everything.

By 3.2 and the release of Midas, IMO WHM vs AST was about in the right place for Savage. WHM was the comfy healer that offered 0 group contribution and mobility but brought a ton of raw healing potency to the table with the caveat of enmity and mp as well as offering a huge safety net with Media IIs reach which was a genuine concern in a lot of Midas turns.

By contrast, AST was still behind on raw potency plus reach and as a result, made things a fair bit sketchier at times. But in turn it brought the cards whilst also offering advantages in self sustain and enmity by that point. Remember that the AoE Balance meta really didn't kick in until 3.4 when SE inexplicably woke up and chose violence at a point when the 2 jobs were actually somewhat balanced.

It's genuinely interesting to think about how different things would have panned out off those 3.4 AST changes hadn't gone through.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeh, I wasn't into raiding at the time of 3.2 being around (I was levelling, only started doing raids in 3.4) but my understanding (which I learned later) is that WHM and AST were super close in effectiveness at the time (in midas), and that the 3.4 changes to AST were basically SE just throwing the towel in and saying 'look we'll double the damage card's effect, PLEASE try AST we're begging here', because the playerbase still had it in their heads that 'AST bad, WHM good' from the Gordias incident

I do actually recall having to explain, with maths, to a raid leading figure from an FC I was in at the time, that actually no, we do not need a SCH 'for Succor shields', because Noct AST shields were as strong/slightly stronger

"we understand some people want Heavensward healer design to return but we won't do it"

and that's why I'm onboard with 'ok we can't have 3.0, 5.0+ is contentious, why not the middle ground of 4.0', it's after a lot of pain points for healer ease-of-use were addressed, like damage scaling from MND was a SB change, Cleric Stance dancing was removed and it was made into a flat 2min buff, etc. But we still had some stuff to play with, like Aero 3, 4 DOTs on SCH (well, one was used for mobility), AST had fun with unique card effects, etc. If that was 'fun, but imbalanced' and now we have 'not so fun, but more balanceable, but not perfectly balanced because the top 50 speedruns are still running mostly AST SCH', then I'd say the solution is not to remove more stuff to make balance easier, but to try and balance what was fun, as best as possible. People are always gonna find 'the one that does more damage', it's the nature of doing content with a time limit (enrage). If you balance, say, AST vs WHM such that the difference in damage for an AST is 95-105% of a WHM of equal skill (based on factors like RNG of cards and skill of allies during buff windows) then who cares if the AST is doing a bit more than the WHM on SOME pulls?

That's the issue I think, at the end of the day: People compare classes based on 'the best pull recorded'. It's possible that, should I run a 100m sprint over, and over, and over, maybe I get a run that rivals Usain Bolt's, by sheer coincidence arising from how many times I repeated the sprint. But that doesn't mean I can challenge him in a race, because that one run was just a lucky fluke, and I should be comparing my average run time, to his average. Here in FFXIV though, people compare their best time to Usain's best time, and then complain that they don't match up regardless of any other factors

[Gullis]

Because the sad truth is that dmg is the only thing that matters.

All those other choices would just be worse options compared to getting dmg card.

[ty_taurus]

Because the sad truth is that dmg is the only thing that matters.

All those other choices would just be worse options compared to getting dmg card.

But you can separate them into different draw commands. Have 3 cards that fill the offensive deck, and 3 that fill the utility deck. Your normally use your offensive cards, but when you want mitigation, extra healing, or utility, you draw from the other deck as well. They are separate cooldowns.

[Post]

I think it's worth pointing out that even when WHM wasn't as OP as SCH in ARR, AST in 3.4+ HW, or really special at all in 4.x, most players still played WHM for whatever variety of factors, be that ease of use, accessible from level 1 or classic FF nostalgia.

This was fine. WHM was *never* in a position where it could not complete content, like AST in early HW. I think the imbalance in performance is natural, especially if they insist that only half the jobs in the role can contribute to the meta 2 min group buffs (no tanks have been able to directly buff another job's damage since 5.0). It was always viable.

But, near balance in playstyle is the problem, because that's where the homogeny hurts the players.

Their 'play any job you want' system is at its most broadly appealing when each job within a role manages to do this:

Viable in performance, diverse in gameplay.

[ty_taurus]

I think it's worth pointing out that even when WHM wasn't as OP as SCH in ARR, AST in 3.4+ HW, or really special at all in 4.x, most players still played WHM for whatever variety of factors, be that ease of use, accessible from level 1 or classic FF nostalgia.

This was fine. WHM was *never* in a position where it could not complete content, like AST in early HW. I think the imbalance in performance is natural, especially if they insist that only half the jobs in the role can contribute to the meta 2 min group buffs (no tanks have been able to directly buff another job's damage since 5.0). It was always viable.

But, near balance in playstyle is the problem, because that's where the homogeny hurts the players.

Their 'play any job you want' system is at its most broadly appealing when each job within a role manages to do this:

Viable in performance, diverse in gameplay.

I don't think there's anything wrong with there being a meta job choice for savage content as long as every job is at least viable, as you state. However, one of the problems I have with white mage is that even though it's viable, it has historically struggled to actually offer any sort of advantage over astrologian or scholar. Every job should at least offer something it does that other jobs of the same role cannot. Scholar has Expedient now, which means no matter what the balance between it and the other healers looks like, it will always offer something of tangible value.

White mage is just easier astrologian, but worse in every meaningful way in terms of performance. It also suffers from having exactly one form of mitigation in the mitigation meta which sits on a two minute cooldown. It needs to get something that gives it some sort of independent value. I've suggested Float before, a party buff that makes everyone immune to floor damage and puddle AoEs. It's more niche than Expedient, but would allow you to do things like cross the gaps between the platforms in P10 without taking damage (which is lethal in savage). It would allow white mage to be the only healer that could solve certain mistakes in that fight as well, something astrologian was allowed to do during P3S, and something scholar gets to do to a lesser degree but in nearly every fight.

[Semirhage]

I don't think there's anything wrong with there being a meta job choice for savage content as long as every job is at least viable, as you state. However, one of the problems I have with white mage is that even though it's viable, it has historically struggled to actually offer any sort of advantage over astrologian or scholar. Every job should at least offer something it does that other jobs of the same role cannot. Scholar has Expedient now, which means no matter what the balance between it and the other healers looks like, it will always offer something of tangible value.

White mage is just easier astrologian, but worse in every meaningful way in terms of performance. It also suffers from having exactly one form of mitigation in the mitigation meta which sits on a two minute cooldown. It needs to get something that gives it some sort of independent value. I've suggested Float before, a party buff that makes everyone immune to floor damage and puddle AoEs. It's more niche than Expedient, but would allow you to do things like cross the gaps between the platforms in P10 without taking damage (which is lethal in savage). It would allow white mage to be the only healer that could solve certain mistakes in that fight as well, something astrologian was allowed to do during P3S, and something scholar gets to do to a lesser degree but in nearly every fight.

This. 100%. The problems I have with WHM's design are many, but this one is particularly deep-rooted. WHM is stuck in this craptastic place where it has no material advantages. It offers nothing the other healers don't already (or that they don't do better). The other healers have utility WHM couldn't even hope to offer. A combat sprint? Hell no, that has to go on one of the healers that can -already- do everything and more. If it's never allowed to stand out in any way, it'll be forever limping along in the state it's pretty much always been in: "It can clear content I guess".

It's why I'm always wary of the "just revert to Stormblood! It'll be fine with some tweaks! Screw balance, make things fun instead!" take. Yeah, we all know exactly how that's going to turn out. A forever-meta where two specific jobs are always superior to their competition, and the only remaining slider is how *much* better.

Yes yes, there will always be a meta, that's just how math works. FF14's healer meta is SO stagnant though. WHM's design constraints pretty much define it as "the stupid shitty one that sucks and is for people who are bad at healing and has no utility or gimmicks or uniqueness". I can tell you right now exactly what the healer meta in Dawntrail is going to be. AST/SCH. Maybe SGE for a patch. Why? Because it's always AST/SCH. Because their competition is designed to be "me, but with a hole carved out of the utility portion of the kit replaced with nothing". Wait why is the class I just defined as strictly worse not competitive? A mystery for the ages.

[Supersnow845]

The other problem with WHM is even in the era of ShB stagnant healing WHM more than anything they just seem to have absolutely no idea what to do with when they give it new skills

HW WHM got 4 skills added that were unique WHM level up skills (assize, asylum, tetra and aero 3), the first three were amazing balances to WHM’s overtly high GCD focused healing that cost them a lot of mana and the latter was a good counter to the fact SCH basically used to be a DPS with respect to dungeon damage (note here SCH also got really good balanced skills in HW like indom to counter the fact SCH only had whispering dawn and succor in 2.0 for AOE healing)

Then we hit 4.0 and for some reason square enix decided to introduce the lily system, I’m not going to go into detail again about the lily system in stormblood other than to say I legit have no idea who the hell ever signed off on that trash fire but otherwise the other main skill WHM got was the incredibly unwieldy old plenary indulgence which used to be a nightmare to use

Then we get to 5.0 and WHM as a whole doesn’t actually change much except the lily system, by 5.0 the “juggle your few oGCD’s and otherwise GCD heal” meta of 2.0 and early 3.0 is long gone in favour of the current oGCD meta, knowing this square enix decides to change the lily system to being GCD heals that lose the player damage, plus again it’s only real new skill is temperance which is just functionally divine seal, they didn’t change this till WHM hit early 6.0 where it had every factor working against it


So WHM at its best design is “well it works” but far more than any other healer WHM continues to get updates that represent 2 things

1) square enix either still doesn’t understand how the healer meta works and continues to design skills that seem to be focused around the idea that healers cure 1 spam in their downtime
2) these updates take way too long to be fixed and in the meantime put WHM in the trash bin for an expansion

I still cannot figure out why square gives it’s worst updates to WHM (you can’t honestly tell me anyone thought SB lilies would actually work as a system) but also refuses to give it anything that straight up works and instead continues to waste their development budget on WHM by fixing the problems they keep giving it, in general I don’t like every 10 levels getting a massive capstone heal that has no downsides (in fact I like SCH’s 3 capstone skills at 60, 70 and 80 for this fact of actually having downsides) but for gods sake give WHM something only they have and can rely on in every fight that will always have a use (like expedient, panhaima or macrocosmos) so people have a reason to pick WHM and stop wasting development time on dodgy systems that make no sense

[Semirhage]

-snip-

Someone around here once said that WHM's biggest problem was that its design is an expansion behind. I'd say by this point it's almost two. If WHM were at this point in Stormblood (plus Aero 3), it'd be...ehhh, alright. I still hate how backasswards lilies are designed, but alright. We've had two expansions worth of tools added to healers since then, catch up.