Using BLU to end the war

[fulminating]

Are you really sure the cap is higher on red mage now than in shadowbringers?
Embolden? doesn’t have the decaying stack aspect, displacement isn’t a dps gain over stand-still-and-stab, manafication and the red button both changed too iirc. It’s pretty easy to argue that red mage was made simpler entering endwalker, even with the addition of an additional finisher.
This only shows just to what extent obliterated any and all vestiges of nuance and gameplay in summoner.

[ForsakenRoe]

Do you really not understand that?

I understand what you were aiming for. I do not understand why so many of your repertoire of metaphors/analogies involve morally dubious actions

And the same could be said for you. Do you really not understand that it's going to feel absolutely god awful to any WHM main if they are told 'the other healers get cool new things, and you get to have the same gameplay as you currently have'? Getting cool new things is one of the biggest hype-generators of the pre-expansion cycle. Everyone waits with bated breath to see what cool new thing their main gets in the job actions trailer. We analyze the heck out of every frame of the Benchmark to see if there's a sneak peek of a new action in there. Do you not remember how ecstatic people were getting (incorrectly, it turns out) over SGE's showing, because it used SIX different attack animations? So imagine that each healer gets 5 or 6 attack animations shown in the new job action trailer, and WHM shows Glare 4, Dia 2, Assize and Misery, same as we have now. People gave SCH hell for Expedience looking so whelming, how would this be different? I saw the usefulness immediately in Expedience's effects but the playerbase at large laughed it off, how do you expect 'cool new healing spell/mit spell' to persuade the playerbase, when it's competing against the aforementioned 'there's more damage buttons'?

If the announcement was 'SCH gets it's DOTs back, AST gets it's cards back, SGE is now a proper damage>healing healer, WHM remains mostly as it is with the standard potency upgrades', most of the playerbase would immediately pronounce WHM dead on arrival. Whether it is DOA or not is not the point. Community perception matters, DRK suffered a constant 'it's trash' in SB despite being serviceable enough to claim both ultimate worldfirsts. The parroting of opinions carries far more weight than any amount of facts about potency or relative outputs

And by all metrics we have available (aka, an unofficial survey with sub-1000 respondents), I AM offering what people are asking for, to a degree. They just aren't you and people like you, is the issue you're seeing. I could absolutely go and make a design that puts more focus on healing being the challenging thing to optimize on healers. MP management, HOT juggling, resource rationing, etc. I started to dip into it with the SGE idea, even. But as mentioned time and time again, I made the ideas I did, having considered key factors in implementation, such as 'knockon effects to old content', 'effect on less skilled/practicing players, and how intuitive new system would be to learn/relearn', and of course 'devtime cost to implement/test the rebalancing'.

Picture: I am a WHM player, and I have played WHM for every raid. I have cleared some Ultimates. I do not have any other healers levelled. Only WHM. How does your idea let me find some enjoyment and challenge in EX trials, or EX roulette, or Maps, as a WHM? How do we fulfill this, without burdening casual players too much, without making massive sweeping changes that destroy the balance of older content (eg Ultimates), and without causing a massive devtime requirement?

Are you really sure the cap is higher on red mage now than in shadowbringers?

The cap is entirely down to 'SE made the melee combo even longer', I guess? Acceleration is also a pseudo swiftcast, whereas before it was just 'guarantees proc 3 times' iirc, so now that allows for a bit more mobility compared to previous

[Renathras]

I understand what you were aiming for.

Good.

As for why: Because they're simple. They're easy to understand. The people who decry them at least understand them (and just try to get off the topic/not address the shared understanding).

As to your "do you not understand":

1) not "any WHM main": I am a WHM main.

2) No, I understand that. The issue is (a) no matter what we do that's going to be the case. People are going to be upset because their Job didn't end up on the side of the fence they wanted. (b) But if we change all of them then no one against the changes is happy, which is just as bad as changing none of them would be. The answer of changing some is the only one that does address everyone's needs. That is, the contra position is just as true. If we change all the healers, what do you say to all the people now upset that THEIR healer doesn't play the same - because NONE of them do anymore? What do you say to the SCH that doesn't like DoTs? What do you say to the SGE that doesn't like a real DPS gameplay? Your own position fails this test.

3) You also still are spreading disinformation about the whole idea: No one is saying nothing at all changes. People are saying not more DPS buttons. There are still "flashy new changes" possible that aren't new DPS rotational buttons. An upgrade to Holy, some new utility button, etc. Moreover, the playerbase always says something is dead on arrival and are wrong. "What is with SCH? It has no new flashy abilities, just some swirly faerie thing" was the word of the day after the EW media tour. Then EW hits. SCH: Meta the ENTIRE EXPANSION and regarded as one of the most fun healers, with Expedience so useful it had to have its sprint duration nerfed by 50%.

In any case, no part of that works with this BLU idea, which doesn't work for anyone. Ty's BLU idea here wasn't (I don't think, anyway - he's more intelligent than to think it would be) a serious proposal. No healer right now is "Press DoT at the start of encounter, then do nothing for the next 10 minutes", so I'm not sure what part of proposing that as an idea would be serious.

That said, I'm fine with - and have said before - a new Healer Job being added that plays exactly like WHM does now, shares CNJ leveling, etc so that people can pick the one they want. I was told that wasn't allowed, either, if you recall. And I've also said it could be any healer other than WHM as long as it played like WHM does now. So you can't really use that as a rebuttal at this point.

.

RE: RDM:

RDM's cap is higher now, yes.

Enchanted Reprise is really bad now since it proportionally costs more (and prevents getting a potential 3rd combo in longer burst/buff windows), and this has slashed RDM's movement capabilities by a good chunk. Timing the rotation right to try and line up the "2 melee comboes with change" into the burst is also tigher than it was before when it just wasn't possible to do in ShB in the first place. I'd have to pull up old logs to see, but I think RDM's bar is wider (between 25% and 75% as well as 0% and 100%) which generally means that a Job has had its skill ceiling raised. RDM's skill floor is also slightly higher now as a result, too. And there's also some weird drift you have to adjust for to realign things due to timers.

But yeah, the cap for RDM is higher now than in ShB. How much higher is an open question, but that it is higher is pretty much certainty as far as I can tell. The skill floor is also a bit higher due to the mobility changes, though I will say Acceleration's change somewhat counters that, but then you get into a lot of optimization issues related to that.

[ForsakenRoe]

1) not "any WHM main": I am a WHM main.

2) What do you say to the SCH that doesn't like DoTs? What do you say to the SGE that doesn't like a real DPS gameplay? Your own position fails this test.

3) There are still "flashy new changes" possible that aren't new DPS rotational buttons. An upgrade to Holy, some new utility button, etc. (and the sch/meta bit)

That said, I'm fine with - and have said before - a new Healer Job being added that plays exactly like WHM does now

1: Yes, I would have said 'the vast majority of WHM mains', but then chances are I'd have got hit with 'actually the majority is satisfied with the current gameplay' or something, because we have little to zero data beyond these unofficial surveys to see what the playerbase actually thinks about this stuff. The fact remains that, should the events described re: the job action trailer actually play out, WHM would get several weeks of being the punching bag for reddit to laugh at. It could be absolute godmode strong on release, but for that pre-release period it'd get ripped to shreds. And that would set the perception for a while. WHM could have gotten the SHB lily fixes in 4.3 alongside the DRK changes that made DRK 'actually pretty good' back then and it wouldn't have mattered because people had already decided what was good and what was bad. Going further back, I've heard on the grapevine that AST was very viable for 3.2 (Midas) but everyone was so stuck in their ways of using WHM, they carried on using WHM and saying 'AST bad', resulting in SE going 'sod it' and buffing AST to the stratosphere to persuade people to try it. And instead of going 'oh AST good now' they all swapped to saying 'lol WHM trash now' because there's only room for two on the winner's podium

2: It did not seem to be an issue for SE when, despite the people who DO like DOTs settling into maining SCH, then removed all of the DOTs in SHB. Beyond that, I do feel somewhat for those who would have a new playstyle (possibly one they don't enjoy) thrust on them, but I think it's an unfotunate necessity of making the jobs feel distinct from one another again. We cannot just lock DOTs off of SCH because 'what if someone does not like DOTs', because we can apply that thinking to all four healers, and then DOTs as a playstyle are just off the table entirely. Then we do the same with say, MP management. Or CD management. And then we get to where we are now: one single uninspired filler spell, because everything else was ruled out because 'what if player doesn't like that playstyle, but wants to keep maining this job'. Which all goes back to 'if SE hadn't done the SHB prune, we would not be in this mess', because SCH would have always been the DOT focused healer, and nobody would have gotten used to BroilMage

3: We just got one, called Holy 3. It's 10p more than Holy 1. It's the perfect example of 'all flash and no substance'. Utility buttons are only as useful as based on the situations that demand them. Lilybell is cool, only when the fight actually hits hard, and in quick succession (eg Harrowing). Without that, eg if you're fighting EX roulette bosses, it's nothing more than 'plant it and instant-detonate for 1000p', which makes it pretty bland in most content, because most content does not demand it's true potential. Macrocosmos was an interesting one because it got such incredible use because of an oversight. Most other 'utilities' are very forgettable. Looking at DPS, Mantra/Minne/other heal increasers are hardly ever used correctly outside of tough content. The Warden's Paean gets popped by Bards on themselves much more often than it does on allies as a cleanse, such that I'm already casting Esuna by the time they use it on the ally, rendering it's 'gain' of saving the healers a GCD moot. Ranged and Tanks have interrupts and half the time they don't even get used, you can see Dohn Mheg's first pull for that. I'm not sure what 'utility' you are thinking of, that would be somehow super impactful and appreciated, yet also not impactful enough to mean 'this is locked slot, we NEED that utility'. Expedience is cool, but you don't need the additional movespeed for anything. In fact, it could lose the movespeed entirely and I'd still call it 'strong move', the Mit is the reason I think it's strong

4: Yes, this is the part that keeps confusing me. You previously described the model as '3 healers change, one stays as it is for those who enjoy current gameplay', and then when AST was suggested as the non-changing one, that was ruled out because 'its the least played' or something. So, to me, it seems less that 'one stays the same' and more 'either WHM or SGE stays the same because those are the ones I play'. It seemed very goalpost-shifty. If SE wants to add a new healer which branches off of CNJ, and is explicitly stated by SE that 'we are adding this for people who enjoy current WHM, so that we can evolve WHM's kit while allowing those players to keep the playstyle they enjoy', I have no issue with that. The issue is if they add a new healer and DON'T make that explicit statement, because then the perception by default is that the new healer will have potential for growth like SCH or AST would be getting. Which would lead to complaints from people when it turns out that it does not get to grow.

Ty you wanted to use BLU to end the war but you have merely fanned the flames and the war rages more than ever before, it seems. And yes the proposal is not serious, because as Ren rightly states, no healer puts up a DOT and then stands AFK for 10 minutes. Well, some do, but they have their reasons, I'm sure. So, I think you need to change the DOT potency to 480 (to better match SGE's per-2-min output), and then add Water Cannon, with a potency of 10, so that there is a filler GCD to press. It's completely 'wow who cares' on potency so people don't feel as bad for missing one or two because of movement, but it's there so that people have something to press when there's nothing else to do. Or make it Flying Sardine with it's instantcast, so they don't need to worry about movement blocking their GCD usage

Only part of that was serious and it is up to the reader to work out which part

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

lmao at calling this dumb forum slap fight a war

[Connor]

Putting the uh, other stuff aside, wouldn’t White Wind be pretty cool for a healer ability? ‘Heals party in proportion to current max HP’ could be a kinda fun limitation to work around, since it’d actually get weaker the more damage you took, like a reverse Essential Dignity.

[fulminating]

White wind is only remotely interesting when it's a substantial aggro generator and mp drain, which is to say on synced blu content. Otherwise it just turns into pre-excog + ww for cleansing strike type mechanics and an either it kills you or it's meaningless dichotomy elsewhere.

[Renathras]

...

1. I think it would have been better to say "WHM mains who want major changes". Since we don't know how many they are nor their percentage of the whole, using any such terms doesn't work. WHM is already the punching bag and has been for 6 years. That ship has sailed and is irrelevant anyway if people playing the Job are having fun with it. So no, that's not a great argument.

2. And this is why you should oppose them doing what you're pitching now - you know how bad it is when SE does things taking Jobs and playstyles (in the SB case, DPS/support healers) out from under people. But setting that aside: WHM in ShB - as discussed in the Healers: Then And Now thread - didn't lose much in the transition and gained more than they lost, ending up in a better state in ShB and (other than 6.0 itself) EW. So making WHM go back to that makes no sense, and even advocates for change aren't suggesting going back to SB WHM other than "readd Aero 3", which is a position I've come to support myself anyway. If you see something that harmed people, your first thought shouldn't be "So this justifies harming the people I don't like who had nothing to do with that decision anyway."

3. THE POINT remains - no one is saying no change ever to anything. It's just the supported changes not being DPS rotational.

4. I've made it clear enough times, you still being unclear is a willful decision. I'm not sure how to explain it to you better since you're so resistant to understanding it. And "room for growth" does not require "DPS rotation expansion". Not giving WHM a damage rotation has plenty of "room for growth".

[ty_taurus]

Not giving WHM a damage rotation has plenty of "room for growth".

A cancerous growth...

[Renathras]

A cancerous growth...

A growth you dislike.

This sort of comment of yours, btw, is the kind of thing that isn't helpful.

...

Btw, so you know, I'm fine with WHM, SCH, and SGE right now. Each of them I find pretty fun and enjoyable to play. The only thing I really really hate about SCH is Dissipation. But I'd be fine with literally any of them keeping the DPS setup they have now. Yes, even the Energy Drain weirdness on SCH.