Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
Let one healer have this stupid ass rotation - probably White Mage
This part is the part that makes me think it's more a case of 'well if there has to be a pound of flesh offered in sacrifice, let it be this one for X reason', my assumption being, he prefers SCH/AST, especially considering how he goes on about Noct Sect. So if he has zero inclination to play WHM now or after this '4 healers rework', it wouldn't have any effect on him if the class was still in the place it's in now. He'd be on AST or SCH or 'gigabrain mindmelting rotation' SGE.

Maybe it's some nuance of language where he's from, but I've never heard someone say 'stupid ass X' and mean it in a positive light

Quote Originally Posted by Deo14 View Post
I don't propose to keep WHM exactly the same, but simply not to alter it too much, so it won't alienate casuals, and then bring back AST and SCH to former glory. I fully understand that this is not ideal, however, it is realistic. How many times in this game's history did they make job harder and more complex, instead of easier and more brain dead? Which is why I think it's okay to have this sacrificial lamb, that people dissatisfied with the potential changes can turn to.

Yes, my idea is essentially negotiating, again, it's not ideal, but it's more realistic. There are casuals, which do indeed like playing healers for their simplicity. Some people are just fine with 1211111, and even though my inner gamer would want these people to wake up and put more effort into their gameplay, that's unrealistic, this game does have a lot of these people, and we know from the past that devs are afraid of the casuals and wouldn't want to go against them.

As for implementation details, there's a lot of theory crafting, with making GCD heals be worth it, making healers actually heal and so on. You could make AST cards GCD, but next malefic will deal 2x damage, Adlo could deal damage if it bursts, or refund you gauge when it doesn't, whatever, there's lot of options how you could fix healers. But I'm not really qualified for this, and jumping straight into details when we don't know if SE will even bother doing something is not my forte.
I mean, technically same, I don't want WHM to change 'much', I just take issue with the idea that it does not change 'at all'. All we need is shorter Dia duration, and a new GCD that is staggered slightly from Dia so they don't just come up at the same time (leading to a 32111 loop every time). The problem that is hard to work with is that SE seems to have this repository of data collated, that they reference when making changes, but nobody seems to know who the data was collated from. JP thinks the devs listen to NA, NA thinks the devs listen to JP. So I have to wonder, for example, when the change to High Jump (merging with Mirage Dive) was made, who did they get feedback from asking for that specific change? There's several other changes they make that are apparently informed by feedback, but with no source given, or in some cases, completely incorrect data, like SHB's reduction in damage skills on healers, justified by 'SCH would force WHM to do all the healing (the two were equal on HPS, and now that mit is considered HPS on FFlogs, SCH would be far far ahead)'.

So, when someone on these forums tries to make an idea of 'how to make the healers a bit more fun to play, but also keep them casual friendly, but also keep their job identities intact, and also keep them balanced against their peers', it's like we're walking through a minefield. At any moment we could set off one of the 'mines of argument' about a specific point, because we don't know what the conditions the devs design around actually are. We can assume, with WHM for example, 'the devs want to keep the class easy to approach, feels powerful and rewarding when using your strong heals, has more of a focus on GCD healing', and try to design around those points (ie, bringing back Divine Seal as a way to have a heal% increase tool at lower levels, plays into 'GCD heal focused'). But without any direct confirmation about anything, we're basically flying blind. And that means some suggestions veer into getting shot down instantly because 'the devs would never do this', because they said 'screw it, IDK what the devs have as the 'lines in the sand' for the class, I'll just go all out with what I want the class to be if I had full creative authority'.

You want a suggestion on how to make GCD heals worth it? Medica 2 has a 45-60s CD, generates one blood lily. Cure 3 generates a blood lily when used under the effect of Medica 2's HOT. Now you have Cure3 having more relevance, it has a way to be damage neutral, Med2 100% uptime memes are removed (this means people learn earlier on that spamming it is not efficient), the non-100% uptime nature of the change means that the MP issue/'punishing because every 4th GCD has to be a Misery' Ren accidentally caused doesn't occur, and you could do the same with a 30s CD Regen > Cure2 generates blood lily. Make BL stack to 5 via traits (and give Misery a 15-20s CD so you aren't able to get two into raidbuffs via memes), something like that IDK there's probably some issues still with the idea. I don't exactly like the idea of making everything damage neutral with zero downsides (ie, every heal GCD on WHM is just neutral), I'd prefer it to be 'neutral with a conditional to work around'. Lily heals are neutral, but you only get one per 20s. AST OGCDs are neutral (they're OGCD) but they have their own CDs to work around. So, having Medica 1 remain as the 'everything's going wrong' panic AOE heal, and Med2 > Cure3 be the more MP-hungry-but-damage-neutral strat is better design in my eyes. Well, 'better design' as far as that idea can be 'better', I'd rather have other solutions but we're all very aware of how I'd handle things by now