For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Deo14]

This is literally my argument here all the time and I get flayed for it.

That's actually more extreme than mine - mine is for only WHM or SGE to stay as it is, AST to get more buffs/related gameplay, SCH to be returned to its SB version, and either SGE or WHM to have a damage kit (probably SGE due to Kardia, but could instead do it with WHM and leave SGE as it is considering it's always been in this state and never had anything like Cleric stance or Aero 3 for people to miss/want back).

I make this argument here all the time. I even have a name for it "The 4 Healers Model". The idea that we have 4 Healer Jobs, and the issue (among many, but related to Job kits/design/playstyle) is that they all play the same. I don't think going from one same (casual/easy) to another same (all hardcore/complex) is the solution. I think the solution is to split and have some representing each.

That is the argument I make here all the bloody time, and get told I'm the only person who thinks that way, that I want "ez mode", "braindead", etc etc.

I'm not gonna lie, I don't have much of an idea what's the general consensus on healers here, other than that people are bored from spamming same button. Even though I barely play healers nowadays, I used to love healing in every game, but well, FFXIV's healers don't meet my expectations when it comes to healing so I play mostly SAM/PLD, which is why I don't come in this part of forums very often.

I thought that idea to keep WHM same and make others interesting is somewhat popular, but that might be general consensus from somewhere else. I guess it makes sense in light of current SMN and RDM situation. People are probably worried that making WHM too easy relatively to other healers will make people choose WHM for the sake of accessibility, and that people playing harder jobs will not be rewarded accordingly for their higher efforts, which is completely fair, because that is happening right now with SMN and RDM.

But well, I don't really want to read 10s of pages of posts to find out whether mine and yours idea is popular or not. But I'll stand by it (unless someone gives me some insight why it's bad idea, of course), even though I understand the risk of it being implemented the same way SMN was. My reasoning is that WHM is simply most favorite job for casuals, so I think that if SE actually did some drastic changes to healers, WHM is last job they would drastically change, especially if it meant making it more difficult. I myself would love if all 4 healers were very distinct, had a lot of space for skill expressions, and had better gameplay than 12111111, but I really think that keeping one simple job for casuals is much more realistic scenario that SE might consider and even implement. They do not want to alienate casuals which are playing WHM because of it's simplicity, it's simple as that.

Irrelevant to healers:

Anyways, there are more reasons why people don't want to side with you or why you're not getting upvotes or whatever pointless internet points. Just learn to make shorter text. Your essays are just intimitating, nobody is going to agree with something they haven't read, people just see wall of text and skip it. And don't get missconception that most people do read it because people respond to you. If someone reads such an essay, then I bet they feel more inclined to give response to it.

Another is your attitude - do you remember whole "BLM cannot slidecast" argument? You were in the wrong, but you kept trying to defend yourself. Next like 3-5 comments after your initial statement told you that BLM can indeed slidecast, all in very neutral tone, but because you kept trying to defend yourself, it escalated and people just started to dogpile on. And then you've made that comemnt where you attacked everyone.

Same goes for our last argument (which we unfortunately didn't finish, because it seems that some people dislike me so much they spam reported my week old comment which had 2 swear words in it, which resulted in 10 days "vacation". I made fun of pedophiles and mainsub just few hours before my ban, so that's probably their job). Anyways, in that argument, you tried to argue my napkin math, with more non-sensical napkin math. And when I proved you wrong, you just like always tried to nitpick your way out of it. Just learn to admit mistakes. You don't need to write public apology or anything, just leave conversation, and stop dying on the most stupid hills.

This is why people start to make fun of you - you even said the legendary "Consider yourself informed, now" after saying a load of incorrect info, with all the nitpicking, mental gymnastics and other cheap tricks in attempt to try to make it seem like you're right. After that, well, your reputation just preceeds you, so many people will be against you just because it's you. This is human nature, this isn't some high school discussion club, where personal attacks and biases are out of questions.

Combine all of this with not very popular opinions, and then it can seem like everyone is against you.

[AmiableApkallu]

My reasoning is that WHM is simply most favorite job for casuals, so I think that if SE actually did some drastic changes to healers, WHM is last job they would drastically change, especially if it meant making it more difficult. I myself would love if all 4 healers were very distinct, had a lot of space for skill expressions, and had better gameplay than 12111111, but I really think that keeping one simple job for casuals is much more realistic scenario that SE might consider and even implement. They do not want to alienate casuals which are playing WHM because of it's simplicity, it's simple as that.

And I wish that SE would realize that what makes WHM friendly to "casuals" is it's Lv.50 kit and how MSQ encounters are currently designed.

Unless the tank(s) have never heard of stance or mitigations, and unless the rest of the party thinks the goal is to stand in the orange 100% of the time, Lv.50 WHM has what it takes: Readily available HP restoration. And if you find yourself running low on MP, just don't do anything for a few moments. There's no meaningful enrage to contend with.

That leaves multiple expacs worth of levels to do something interesting and exciting with WHM.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

And I wish that SE would realize that what makes WHM friendly to "casuals" is it's Lv.50 kit and how MSQ encounters are currently designed.

Unless the tank(s) have never heard of stance or mitigations, and unless the rest of the party thinks the goal is to stand in the orange 100% of the time, Lv.50 WHM has what it takes: Readily available HP restoration. And if you find yourself running low on MP, just don't do anything for a few moments. There's no meaningful enrage to contend with.

That leaves multiple expacs worth of levels to do something interesting and exciting with WHM.

I would go further & say "If you want beginner/casual friendly healer go play CNJ" lol, because they do have what it takes for those MSQ encounters, dungeons, and trials! (obviously random DF groups wouldn't take that kindly, but you get the idea)

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not gonna lie, I don't have much of an idea what's the general consensus on healers here, other than that people are bored from spamming same button. Even though I barely play healers nowadays, I used to love healing in every game, but well, FFXIV's healers don't meet my expectations when it comes to healing so I play mostly SAM/PLD, which is why I don't come in this part of forums very often.

I thought that idea to keep WHM same and make others interesting is somewhat popular, but that might be general consensus from somewhere else. I guess it makes sense in light of current SMN and RDM situation. People are probably worried that making WHM too easy relatively to other healers will make people choose WHM for the sake of accessibility, and that people playing harder jobs will not be rewarded accordingly for their higher efforts, which is completely fair, because that is happening right now with SMN and RDM.

But well, I don't really want to read 10s of pages of posts to find out whether mine and yours idea is popular or not. But I'll stand by it (unless someone gives me some insight why it's bad idea, of course), even though I understand the risk of it being implemented the same way SMN was. My reasoning is that WHM is simply most favorite job for casuals, so I think that if SE actually did some drastic changes to healers, WHM is last job they would drastically change, especially if it meant making it more difficult. I myself would love if all 4 healers were very distinct, had a lot of space for skill expressions, and had better gameplay than 12111111, but I really think that keeping one simple job for casuals is much more realistic scenario that SE might consider and even implement. They do not want to alienate casuals which are playing WHM because of it's simplicity, it's simple as that.

I guess my main issue with that approach is that it treats 'casual-friendliness' as this sort of wholesale, sacred, and impermeable thing that's impossible (or taboo) to analyze and reach a better equilibrium from, when the reality is more likely that you could simultaneously have a WHM that is more engaging to most of your common camps of healers AND actually improve upon most aspects contributing to 'casual-friendliness', to a greater net accessibility/responsiveness/enjoyability even to your most casual players, because that matter does break down into many finer aspects.

Would that take more work than just giving up on that job preemptively for some sort of misguided political bargaining chip for a nebulously defined group that can't or won't speak for itself? Of course. But that work is worthwhile and deserved.

Reserving a job's entire current state regardless of what its parts contribute to or how much is essentially to bar analysis of that kit and thereby bar even the prospect of improvement. Being cautious is good, but preemptively denying a job any changes whatsoever, no matter how vetted, is just wasteful and pointless.

No job should be stuck with that kind of treatment.

Examples of 'Casual-friendliness' being rather more complicated and piecemeal than most "Keep WHM the same" arguments would imply:

While difficulty isn't mutually exclusive on the whole, individual challenges' contribution to that 'difficulty' is largely zero-sum.

The more of your throughput is locked into CDs or HoTs/DoTs, for instance, the more those particular moments disproportionately matter, but the less each other moment of uptime does. A healer struggling with GCD-healing-minimization in itself, for instance, will actually be less skill-gapped in their rDPS when carrying a higher portion of DoT/CD-based damage (as opposed to having only or almost only their filler attack).

The more of your healing potential comes from "free" CD-based healing, not only the less potency-per-GCD can you put out in balance (since you're now assumed to have near to 100% damage-contributing uptime instead of the <75% of yesteryear), but also the more punished you are for tapping into less finite/discrete resources. Or, more simply put, leaving relative healing requirements at or below the level that can be covered wholly through "free" resources gaps further gaps casual play, since it increases the relative punishment of any conservative or less informed play (I don't know when next we'll get burst, so I'll hold onto some of this).

Now, that knowledge gap being widened by being tuned around healing only with oGCDs would be a 'good thing' to players who want more of their performance to come from having 'solved' the fight and then executing in that exact way ad nauseum thereafter, certainly. But it sure as hell isn't making the job more 'casual-friendly', despite its "low" relative healing requirements (how much rDPS is put at risk from damage intake) and starves rewards for those who'd like to have room to min-max the healing itself, rather than just healing-minimization. (And that's even without accounting for the counter-intuitiveness of a kit increasingly making its foundational tools redundant or outright punishing.)

And yet somehow many (including even Misshapen Chair) insist on implying that low relative healing requirements (little visible rDPS cost from healing) are "casual-friendly", or that if using virtually any GCDs at all, rather than just... slightly more of them... weren't purely optional or weren't meant only to salvage past mistakes then matchmaking would go all to hell because of the casual players? (All while complaining that the most casual players can't remember to sequence their many excessive healing oGCDs in scripted order before --or, as to prevent-- touching any of their GCDs heals?) It's a mess.

------

And yet, there are generally some things we can usually agree upon, per such ideals as "easy to learn, hard to master" or making that ideal true not just of the job as a whole, but it's actual interactions with content (so it's not just "hard af until you 'solve' the fight, then easy/boring af thereafter").

There are ways that we parse the optimizations available to a given job (what they can do for some degree of reward ultimately towards the uncapped throughput useful to the encounter) and look at which should be considered most core and therefore hold the largest portion of the pie, without so squishing all else that those other optimizations are hardly worth thinking about.

And we [S]should[/I], imo, expect a level of care in job design nearer to that.


__________________

Who is even supposed to benefit from the "Keep WHM exactly the same" approach?

Who gains from being maximally punished for each excess non-"free" heal and being so highly rewarded for having quickly 'solved' the healing bottlenecks of the fight and then having worked backwards from there to establish their then-constant rhythm of healing CDs? ...Is that really the... "casual healer" that seems slated to gain the most?

Who gains from precluding any further infrequent non-healing actions that could reduce the relative ppgcd cost of GCD heals? Depending on implementation, yes, having nothing but Glare and 2 Dias per minute could help those who are especially bad at tracking CDs (in general or, somehow, only if they're damage-producing) and/or pre-planning GCD heals (if such were ever required) to retain room for hitting their offensive CDs/DoTs more or less on time.

But does that single aspect of difficulty produce more of a skillgap between the elite and average player than does the aspect affected (minimizing GCD healing)? What about when we decrease the chance of falling asleep at the wheel/on the book/cane/nouliths?