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

[Renathras]

/scratches head

/shrug

Never change, Semi.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm quoting him because overall his point is more like your own, but I found his argument compelling. If I quote something from Socrates that I found compelling, would you accuse me of idolizing him?

If --in place of anything solid, be it your own or otherwise-- you choose an argument from him with a contextually gaping hole or obvious hypocrisy in it... all atop having made a months-long campaign out of an idea you say was taken from him ... yeah, as it seems unlikely you'd otherwise think that shit sufficient.

Because it's a videogame and that's what people find fun. No one finds being blacklisted fun, so that's a no-go and limits how much damage variation can exist.

No, having only minimal variation as a result of skillful play is not some super broadly held preference. It's yours.

(And it's a direction that's necessarily limiting; while having higher skill ceilings while jobs are still able to clear with highly imperfect performance creates something for everyone --as one can simply play to that ~60% maximal effort for ~90% of the maximal value and still meet the checks for all but the very hardest content, just with less the carry potential for others-- purposely limiting a job's ceiling just means that the job excludes anyone who wants a greater amount of engagement from their kit itself.)

And the "blacklisting" goes both ways, as why would any PF leader take, say, a BLM over a SMN if there is only at most a "minimal variation" in their max throughput yet the BLM is far harder pressed to even get clear-capable damage out of, let alone its max.

If the playerbase was still consistently taking people that did 30% less damage, sure, we could have massive variances. But the community doesn't, so it doesn't work.

The difference between a BLM's 95th percentile throughput and a SMN's is 8%, even with SMN also bringing additional utility. Even if SMN were nerfed to a fairer position relative to RDM instead of RDM being buffed to equal or greater rDPS, we'd be talking about a ~9% difference. No one is asking for a whopping 30% gap between them, only that the harder jobs shouldn't be a reward-less hazard.

When you can clear every Savage fight with a party that averages a performance of just ~75% of what each job in that party can maximally produce, asking that a job that is harder to optimize to the point of clearing (has 40% more deviation despite only 8% more max damage) should at least have enough of a max throughput gap to make it worth learning and taking... is not asking for the world. It's literally what's necessary not to see such jobs blacklisted for being holdouts against skill ceilings being increasingly squished.



Why hyperbolize?

[Renathras]

If --in place of anything solid, be it your own or otherwise--

...which is why I also make my own arguments. I tend to use that quote because it's WAY more succinct than I could put it. Shurrikhan, you know how long winded I can be. Do you doubt for a moment if I tried to say that in my own words it would end up being PARAGRAPHS in length?

all atop having made a months-long campaign out of an idea you say was taken from him

I've never once said the idea was taken from him. I never have made that claim once. I was making the argument for the idea well before I ever saw his video, and actually felt mildly vindicated that even a kind of hardcore guy who was endlessly complaining about how braindead healers were now had the same idea as me. Naively, I thought that might resonate with some of you. I was mistaken, of course.

Indeed, quite the opposite of me claiming it, several OF YOU GUYS have claimed that's where I got the idea (generally to discredit it or me or both), and stubbornly, keep doing so even after I've debunked the claim multiple times.

No, having only minimal variation as a result of skillful play is not some super broadly held preference. It's yours.

Prove it.

Why hyperbolize?

You're the one saying literally no one but me holds the position that I do. I think you're the one that should be asked that question first.

[Shurrikhan]

Mate, you're the one making the claim that your preference is shared by "the people". That's on you to prove.

I said it's your position, yes, rather than that of those who've been disagreeing with you or likely to be that of some silent majority. Whether a significant group of others share it, again, is up to you to prove.

[Renathras]

Mate, you're the one making the claim that your preference is shared by "the people". That's on you to prove.

You asked questions of why do things.
My answer is because some people want it.

I never said it was some huge majority. I never made any claim about how many. It's more than just me, though. I never claimed it was "super broadly held". That's you employing hyperbole.

However, "It's just you" is a claim that's unrealistic. In a game with millions of players, it's VERY likely others share my view, and I've posted posts from Reddit of others doing so or even being more extreme than me. So I have proven it. So your claim that it's just me is false and we've verified it's false. So it's up to you to prove that it's changed from true to false since the last time I proved it was true, something you can't do.

In other words, you shouldn't make the claim. You do it to supposedly defeat my argument, but it's ridiculous that there's ANY position that ONLY one person holds.

I said it's your position, yes, rather than that of those who've been disagreeing with you or likely to be that of some silent majority. Whether a significant group of others share it, again, is up to you to prove.

Where did I mention a "silent majority"?

I didn't, since I didn't mention a majority of any kind. This is again you engaging in hyperbole, and a strawman as well.

I've already proven before that others share this view and, again, even more extreme versions of it. Do you doubt I can find those posts again? I've already put the claim I'm the only one that thinks what I do to rest a dozen times by now. So stop with the strawmanning.

.

It's PROBABLY a minority view, but it's held by people. So insisting that no one wants it is false/a lie. You need to stop doing it.

What you have to do is argue why we can't give those people what they want, not insisting (lying) that no one wants it.

.

EDIT:

But this is a sophistry argument.

You're trying to avoid addressing the point or arguing a difficult point that you need to argue.

Instead of saying why we shouldn't do it, you're trying to insist there's no reason to. That's false. There are plenty of reasons to and plenty of people who want it.

It's up to you to argue why we CANNOT give it to them in any way. Again, 1 healer out of 4 isn't 4 healers out of 4. It would leave options for other people. "But if there's an easy one, everyone will be 'forced' to play it!!", is ridiculous. No one is forced to play anything. People doing some kinds of groups choose to do so for various reasons, but punishing OTHER PEOPLE for those people choosing to do a thing when they don't have to is wrong.

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And the irony is, right now, WHM is already considered inferior to the others because of its weaker mitigation suite. So having a nonexistent gap between skill floor and ceiling wouldn't suddenly make it meta where no one is taking AST, the single most overpowered healer in the history of the game right now, to content, even if they were doing roughly comparable damage, since AST has other utility that isn't damage that makes it worth bringing.

[Shurrikhan]

However, "It's just you" is a claim that's unrealistic.

Again, not a claim I made. You tried to twist part of your preference into being a claim of those opposed to truncating job's skill ceilings. It's not. It's yours.

Whether others also hold that preference, let alone enough people to warrant limiting others' options just to satisfy that group, is up to you to prove.

Where did I mention a "silent majority"?

If your mutually exclusive preference of some jobs being arbitrarily given lowered skill ceilings is "what people find fun", that claim would depend on that group being large enough to outweigh the preferences of those who would prefer the (not mutually exclusive) option of not arbitrarily truncating certain jobs skill ceilings (and instead letting people just play to the level of effort they enjoy, since most content requires only some 75% of what each job is capable of, which tends to require only half of less of the considerations and tracking required for fully optimizing that job).

So either all votes count equally and they're a majority that just has yet to hold more than the tiniest minority of opinion actually voiced (i.e., is mostly silent), or votes are not counted equally and they're quite literally entitled.

Instead of saying why we shouldn't do it, you're trying to insist there's no reason to. That's false. There are plenty of reasons to and plenty of people who want it.

You are the one asking for the explicitly exclusive option, that certain jobs should NOT allow for available complexity beyond a certain point, regardless of whether the reward for that portion would otherwise continue to be excess to clear requirement.

Again, a player is free not to optimize a job to its full potential while still clearing. That is literally the norm. More than 95% of clear parses have not done all they can to optimize their job, yet 100% of clear parses have, shockingly, cleared. Roughly a mere three-quarters of a job's maximal throughput can still net one a clear, as evidenced by a fifth of all clears even now and what used to be damn near half of them.

You claim that your preference to limit the options of others, ultimately to the aid of either...

• (A) that one can point at their job and say, 'I've done all that can be done' when doing only as little as what used to be sufficiently summarized as 'I've done all that was needed' all while ignoring what higher ceilings are possible on other jobs in their role anyways or
  
  
• (B) to invite a state of imbalance where lower ceiling jobs nonetheless have virtually the same throughput ceiling as others despite taking only, at most, as much effort as other jobs would need to barely clear, thereby dealing on average a third more since they get the max output for the same effort as other's 75%...

...is "what people find fun".

How would the burden of proof not lie with you that your preference to limit others' gameplay is held by a large enough group to warrant that meeting that preference would be the way forward?

[Renathras]

Again, not a claim I made. You tried to twist part of your preference into being a claim of those opposed to truncating job's skill ceilings. It's not. It's yours.

Your exact quote:

No, having only minimal variation as a result of skillful play is not some super broadly held preference. It's yours.

Note nothing here is talking about "my preference" being "a claim of those opposed to truncating job's skill ceilings" (an overly complex way of saying "argument of people wanting wider gaps between skill floor and ceiling" using a double negative between opposed and truncating).

You asked a question: Why do a thing.
I gave an answer: Because some people want it.

That's not "my preference", it's not "being a claim of those opposed to truncating". It's an answer to the question of "Why should we/do we need to do a thing in this game's design". You tried to turn me answering a question into an attack on me, and then when I pointed out others probably share the same position, you tried to move the goal posts with that strangely obfuscating double negative sentence construction.

If your <argument> of some jobs being arbitrarily given lowered skill ceilings is "what people find fun", that claim would depend on that group being large enough to outweigh the preferences of those who would prefer the ... option of not arbitrarily truncating certain jobs skill ceilings

Okay...no.

All it requires is a fair sized percentage minority to justify doing this with one of the healers. 1 out of 4 is 25%, so anything from 15-40% would justify making one healer to appeal to those people. It does not require an outright majority. Moreover, it's unlikely there's an outright majority for either position, given there are 3-5 possible positions to hold on the topic. It's more likely every one of them is a minority position and the largest one is a plurality, not a majority.

This is only relevant if you believe that the amount of people wanting it to matter would be harmed by A SINGLE JOB breaking with that pattern AND that they're the majority, not a plurality or minority. You haven't proven any of those positions, so the argument is moot.

Regardless, my position does not require a majority be for it. Your position, on the other hand, requires majority support, which you haven't proven.

You are the one asking for the explicitly exclusive option,

No, you are.

your position is explicitly exclusive since it demands all Jobs conform to your model with no exceptions, which also requires not only a majority but a DOMINANT and NEAR TOTAL majority should agree with it. You want to shift the onus onto me which your own claim is the one that demands.

My argument isn't exclusive since it allows variance. Your argument is exclusive because it does not. It excludes any alternative, and any players who do not enjoy your system.

Thus the burden of proof lies with you that your preference to limit others' gameplay is held by a large enough group to warrant that meeting that preference is the way forward.

.

But as I pointed out before:

This is sophistry.

This is you trying not to address an argument by trying to attack foundations (that it doesn't have nor require), which is especially destructive to your position as your own argument DOES have those foundations and DOES require them, shifting the burden of proof to you. You'd have been better off to simply address the argument in the first place rather than try to invalidate it through ancillary arguments upon which it does not rely nor hold connections to.

[Shurrikhan]

<snip>

"Sorry, WHM, but there exists a group of healers split among the whole role --not necessarily within your job-- who would much prefer that they can play a job that can clear all content with very little cognitive load and that even what skill ceiling that would produce value only beyond what is required for clears in Extremes, Savage Raids, and so forth should not exist because they wish to feel that they are playing the job to its full potential, so we'll need to truncate WHM in order to ensure that these players have a home for themselves.

• Do not mind that they could see next door in any of the neighboring jobs that they could otherwise do far more, making the whole effort pointless.
• Do not mind that most of them do not play Extreme Trials, Savage Raids, or Ultimates anyways.
• Do not mind that there would be absolutely no cost to their ability to clear from having excess skill ceiling. (Please forget that even the Raid enrage known to be tightest in the game outside of Ultimate, Gordias Savage, was cleared at barely over minimum ilvl on Day 1 of its release in China, simply because familiarity with its mechanics mattered so much more than the maximum output those raiders could produce.)
• Do not mind that it is proportionately likely that these most players, spread across each healer job, already do not play WHM for reasons other than it being 'too hard'.
• Do not mind that it many of these players are not even going to be aware of, nor most of them care, what optimizations they could make beyond what is necessary, removing nearly merit to arbitrarily limiting this job's skill ceiling.
• Do not mind how many players actually do like WHM's aesthetics but are not among this minority spread among each healer job and would rather not have their job arbitrarily limited.
• Do not mind that these player more than likely will go on playing what jobs they preferred, heedless of whether or not those jobs would gain further skill ceiling.
• Do not mind that your job has gotten the shit end of the stick yet again."

[Semirhage]

/scratches head

/shrug

Never change, Semi.

I'm not sure what's unclear about it. You admit to wanting the skill ceiling barely above the floor, both at ankle height frequently enough. I merely point out that the Occam's Razor'd explanation for this:

"Sorry, WHM, but there exists a group of healers split among the whole role --not necessarily within your job-- who would much prefer that they can play a job that can clear all content with very little cognitive load and that even what skill ceiling that would produce value only beyond what is required for clears in Extremes, Savage Raids, and so forth should not exist because they wish to feel that they are playing the job to its full potential, so we'll need to truncate WHM in order to ensure that these players have a home for themselves.

• Do not mind that they could see next door in any of the neighboring jobs that they could otherwise do far more, making the whole effort pointless.
• Do not mind that most of them do not play Extreme Trials, Savage Raids, or Ultimates anyways.
• Do not mind that there would be absolutely no cost to their ability to clear from having excess skill ceiling. (Please forget that even the Raid enrage known to be tightest in the game outside of Ultimate, Gordias Savage, was cleared at barely over minimum ilvl on Day 1 of its release in China, simply because familiarity with its mechanics mattered so much more than the maximum output those raiders could produce.)
• Do not mind that it is proportionately likely that these most players, spread across each healer job, already do not play WHM for reasons other than it being 'too hard'.
• Do not mind that it many of these players are not even going to be aware of, nor most of them care, what optimizations they could make beyond what is necessary, removing nearly merit to arbitrarily limiting this job's skill ceiling.
• Do not mind how many players actually do like WHM's aesthetics but are not among this minority spread among each healer job and would rather not have their job arbitrarily limited.
• Do not mind that these player more than likely will go on playing what jobs they preferred, heedless of whether or not those jobs would gain further skill ceiling.
• Do not mind that your job has gotten the shit end of the stick yet again."

is that those who hold this position primarily about restricting other people want it to be impossible to play the job better than they do. Ironically, the leap to conclusions about personal envy or embarrassment required from that position is about as high as the proposed skill ceiling.

No, you are.

your position is explicitly exclusive since it demands all Jobs conform to your model with no exceptions, which also requires not only a majority but a DOMINANT and NEAR TOTAL majority should agree with it. You want to shift the onus onto me which your own claim is the one that demands.

My argument isn't exclusive since it allows variance. Your argument is exclusive because it does not. It excludes any alternative, and any players who do not enjoy your system.

This is standard Ren "If YOU have an opinion, you need collated survey data that proves a supermajority of everyone on Earth agrees with you in order for your opinion to matter at all.

If *I* have an opinion, some people believe it somewhere and you can't prove how many do so it's probably a nebulously huge number therefore my opinion is the best solution and you need to prove fewer than two people hold this opinion to properly counter it."

[ForsakenRoe]

This is standard Ren "If YOU have an opinion, you need collated survey data that proves a supermajority of everyone on Earth agrees with you in order for your opinion to matter at all.

If *I* have an opinion, some people believe it somewhere and you can't prove how many do so it's probably a nebulously huge number therefore my opinion is the best solution and you need to prove fewer than two people hold this opinion to properly counter it."

Thinking about this, most of what I see on reddit, on here, and the few times I go on youtube videos, are not 'keep one healer the same'. I would not doubt that there's 'some people' who want WHM to remain as is. I also expect there's 'some people' who want BLM to have instant cast times on Fire4, and for NIN to lose it's mudras and instead have separate 'instant suiton/raiton/etc' simple CDs.

Instead, what I tend to see is some combination of:
'give healers more complex damage' (with no mention of leaving one out, therefore by applying common sense, this would apply to all of them)
'give healers more to heal' (this runs the risk of making everything even more mitcheck heavy)
'make jobs including healers have less healing output, thereby enforcing more healing GCDs to be used (usually suggested by nerfing the availability/output of OGCDs)
'give healers more non-damage/healing utilities by which to increase contribution to the raid (I see this less often, I assume they refer to things like Esuna, Dispel, maybe certain CCs on adds ala Repose etc)

So, let's ignore point 1 for now, we've beaten it to death for now. What I want to point out here is that I realize, the suggestion of either increasing healing via nerfing output, or by increasing how much damage is done over an encounter (more frequent, preferably, so as not to make everything into mit-checks more than it is), DOES actually increase the complexity of all four healers. Take WHM for example. Certain individuals would prefer it to remain 'as simple as it currently is', so as not to alienate anyone who is accustomed to it's current expectations. Okay, but if we increase HPS requirements, now we have to spend more healing than we have Lilies for, and doubly so during early prog. Now we've got the real potential of running out of MP. We've got 'you should have used a GCD heal here, because you need to save that Lily for 15s from now to heal and run to your mech spot at the same time, but because you didn't, you now wipe to the HPS required'. We've got the potential for range issues more so than now (if the BRD is out in Narnia and misses the AOE healing, it'd be more punished by the game compared to currently).

It's a self-defeating stance to have. The only way to rationalize the dissonance is 'that kind of complexity is okay because it's healing related complexity, and the role is healer', which, okay sure, but the point made was that we cannot add ANY complexity to the WHM damage kit, because people who are accustomed to how it plays now, will not be able to adapt and keep up with the new design. The same is true of increased HPS requirements. Unlike healing requirements, the 'you didn't do good enough' for damage is A: only a factor at enrage, in content that HAS an enrage, B: more easily coverable by other roles (ie, DPS covering for missing healer damage is easier than tanks covering for missing healing), and C: can actually be addressed much more easily via potency tuning (ie, if the DOT on a healer is not 700p total, but instead 350p, the punishment for missing the optimal refresh time is halved), and trying the same potency tuning with healing just undoes the 'solution' of having harder HPS checks.

In contrast, higher HPS required causes problems with 'adapting to the new design' at almost any point in the fight, not just enrage (you could die at any time to 'the healer couldn't keep up'), healing is harder to get from other roles to make up for a less skilled healer falling behind the game's requirement (WAR would likely become locked-slot status again due to this), and as stated above, we can't just go 'oh well if it's hard for people to keep up with the extra damage from the constant Dropsy throughout the raid fight, we can increase Medica2's regen from 150 to 250 to better keep up'. Well, we could, but then we're back where we started: the healing tools are too strong compared to the damage output by the game. The solution brings more issues than it solves, and also doesn't really solve the issues all that well to begin with