Using BLU to end the war

[ty_taurus]

And there’s the call of the void. I am indeed in hell, and there is no escape.

[ForsakenRoe]

I CAN, the issue is to whom are we appealing? People like you or people like me? I doubt you'd be happy with anything short of a total rework, so there likely aren't a mere 2 abilities that could be added to make you see the gameplay as more fun (without changing anything else, of course).

My own suggestion has long been the same; WHM to have its EW form with a few modifications (Pro-shell, Aero 3, and some way to make some GCD healing damage neutral

Anything. Whatever you think would be a good addition to the game. I would like to know, if you had full creative control for DT, what you would add to WHM, given that it is already able to keep up with any healing check thrown at it thus far with it's current kit.

And that second part is the weird point of contention, that shouldn't be. You are asking for Dia at 30s, and Aero3 (presumably upgrading to Banish) at 24s. I was asking for Dia at 12s and Banish at 15s. Timers aside, these two asks are functionally identical in terms of buttons pressed. So all the arguing seems to come down to 'how many Glares are we removing from the rotation per minute'. For example, do those two timers have to be that duration each? I understand you don't like DOTs, so Dia probably needs to stay pretty long for you. But then, could they not shorten Aero3 to 15 or 12, and buff it's potency massively to compensate so it feels even more bursty and WHM-y? Converting it to an 'up front damage' like Phlegma, while 'homogenization', would not be bad, especially if it upgrades to Banish since that IS a Phlegma-like in Bozja. Compared to what I originally asked for (Dia 12, Banish 15), if we swap the two, and then double Dia back to 30, that takes my pie chart of 8 Glares a minute back to 10, out of a possible 24 GCDs. Which is still less than half so I'd be okay with it (I think). We'd still be adding in 5 non-Glares like that. Essentially it feels like your lines in the sand are on very small details about things, like timers/durations, and it's hard to work around that because I don't know what is the limit for you on each timer. Would you be okay with Dia being 24s, or 21s, IDK maybe 30s is a hard requirement for you and it is set in stone, who knows, sure isn't me and that's the issue

My position, on the other hand, is that SOME being like you want IS good, but not all of them.

Now, that assumes that what we want for a healer, and what we suggested on these forums, are 100% identical. I would assume that, given their background, Ty has modified the proposals they put here to better match the game's engine, tried to respect the dev team's pipeline and lower devtime costs, etc. So it doesn't 100% match what they'd want if they could just, y'know, finger-snap job-done magically. Same for me, what I put for WHM isn't necessarily what I'd want entirely, some bits got left out. I even added lines saying like, Cleric as a 60s CD would be cool but if it can't be fit in (hotbar space or whatever), cut this bit first'. Your 4 Healer model falls for the same trap, surely, being as it's four designs that you want. That being 'the four healers need one between them to have WHM's current gameplay style, and the other 3 can have different gameplay styles (but all must be unique)'. As soon as three healers are named as the 'sacrificed' ones, then the 4th is subject to 'what you want', making all four of the healers be, like, in a quantum superstate of 'not WHMd until the other 3 are declared not-WHMd', and because of that they're all 'A design that Ren wants, until they're not', in a weird way.

And unfortunately, even the game itself falls for the trap. Because the four designs we have now, in game as we speak, were designed by the dev team. They're what SE wants. So in order to fit with what you say here, we'd need the healers to either be designed by four separate people, with no communication between them, or be created by a collaborative effort such that no one person has a majority say over their direction (eg by using feedback from a survey to guide design direction). As it stands, I'd expect the latter is the case, but with only four devs on the whole team (and none of them being a healer main), it's very likely they get stuck in an echo chamber of their own ideas and start being unable to see outside the box on alternative direction, hence we're constantly getting more and more healing stuff each expansion

I would love to see the parallel universe where SE takes designs from forum users for the expansion, so for example, you were 100% in charge of making a WHM design, Ty the SGE one, Skellington the AST one, and idk who on these forums is a big SCH advocate, but that person can do SCH. How different, unbalanced, and dysfunctional would they all be when put into one game together? It would not work in the slightest, but damn it'd be a hilarious 4 weeks before they emergency hotfix them to balance them for Savage release

[Connor]

and idk who on these forums is a big SCH advocate, but that person can do SCH.

Oooh, pick me SE!

Scholar would become the least played job in the entire game, with a population of…one. It’s me lol

[Renathras]

And there’s the call of the void. I am indeed in hell, and there is no escape.

You know what? Screw it. Fine, you take SGE. I actually think your SGE ideas are interesting. I'd never play it, but I never play AST now and am fine with some healer Jobs that I don't want to play (literally an accepted result of the 4HM). I've advocated for that for 2 years now, so yeah, have at it. I actually was looking at https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMEgycsU=/

Prognosis and Diagnosis II look a bit too powerful (500 party and 800 single target spamable GCD heals with no MP cost? Was that supposed to be 0 MP cost? o.O), though I do like you giving the Hamia effect to their Eukrasian versions. I guess it's the Adddersgall consumption, though I'd be worried how this would be able to deal with Doom heal checks without something it could fall back on as a spamable heal. Or can you cast them without MP (again, ridiculously powerful spells...) but they only are damage neutral(maybe?)/generate Adderssting when you have an Addersgall? Should the cost be "X00 MP or 1 Addersgall"? But hey, it's your SGE, just a mild concern. Rhizo converts MP to Addersgall, and you get them over time anyway...

On the damage side, Addersting generates every 15 sec or when executing the above heals while having Addersgalls. Dosis is a standard spell, Dyskrasian Dosis a DoT that you want to use under Dyskrasia to generate an Addersting (so every 15 sec or using Eukrasian Rhizo), Toxicon for movement (maybe?) or Mnemocon for slightly less damage but an MP restoration, Plegma has its CD and comboes into Aphonia to generate additional Addersting (what's the point of Adderstings, though, since Toxicon isn't actually a damage increase and you seem to have a lot of other movement tools?), you can substitute Eukrasian Plegma instead if you want to expend some MP to put a barrier on your Kardia target, and...

...is Ekhokardia the only way to directly heal your Kardia target while doing damage? That seems a bit odd to me if the goal is to primarily heal by doing damage. I do like that there's an AOE version, though. Curing Waltz? Just GCD, spamable, and with an MP cost?

And once per minute, Pneuma generates the Sacred Soil effect while also doing AOE damage.

Honestly, it's pretty wild, but if that's what you'd find fun, I have no issue with it. I think there's something not QUITE making sense to me though, but maybe it's just how I'm looking at it. Also, only 18 abilities? Leveraging Eukrasia/Dyskrasia to massive hotbar efficiency. I can appreciate that.

...

Again, to please who? Which veteran players? I've been playing since 2014, so I'm a veteran, too.

What I'd probably go for is Proshell, Aero 3 upgrade to Banish, and Afflatus being changed from Solace/Rapture into a single ability like Eukrasia (or like Recitation) that allows the next GCD heal (any of Cure 1, Cure 2, Cure 3, Medica 1, Medica 2, and Regen) to be cast at no MP cost and nourish the Blood Lily, consuming one normal Lily in the process. Probably would also combine Cure 1 and 2 (lower the cast time of Cure 2 to 1.5 sec and MP cost to 600) and likewise combine Medica 1 and 2 (increase the base heal of Medica 2 to be identical to Medica 1's). I might also just have Regen be a separate thing from the above and just have every cast of it (it's already instant cast) nourish the Blood Lily, but I'm not certain on this one yet. I just find the idea of throwing Regens on people and exploding Misery on the boss hilarious for some reason...

Also, no, a 30 sec Dia and 24 sec Banish is not the same as a 12 sec Dia and 15 sec Banish. The latter ones consume far more mental energy to maintain and are falling off all the time, making it a more obnoxious exercise in plate spinning. Though Banish at 15 sec might not be terrible and would make a nicer cadence. Especially since we don't have the averaged Solace/Rapture coming out 3x per minute since they're shifted to using other GCD heals, which would be a slightly different feel. I also think Assize should be a GCD with 2 charges, but oGCD with 2 charges would also be kind of nice. The problem is people would just try to maximize the damage of it instead of use the flexibility for healing...

Though, you wording your issue with trying a compromise does make some sense (that is, you not quite getting what I'd really dislike vs what I dislike but would accept vs what I'd like). Hm...I'll have to think about it, honestly. I don't really even like Dia, though macro abuse makes it nicer, and my Aero 3/Banish is more an olive branch to the people always saying they liked SB WHM having Aero 3 (but no one actually defends anything else about it) so the thought is, if we had that, those people would presumably be happy with WHM's EW kit otherwise since that's the only part they say they miss about WHM going from SB to EW.

I suspect that isn't accurate, but for the sake of compromise, it seems a worthwhile olive branch to try. As I often point out, WHM going from SB to ShB didn't lose anything other than Aero 3 and Fluid Aura, and its overall kit became better in every way, so I honestly don't think just having Aero 3 back would make those people as happy as they say, but considering how often it's asked for, it seems worthwhile to try and see if that makes people happy.

The simplest compromise would just be "take EW WHM and give it Aero 3". I've not seen anyone willing to actually defend SB era lilies, so I think everyone agrees that SB WHM sucked, everyone just misses twirly staff (and, not gonna lie, I do, too, even if I only used Aero 3 in AOE and didn't care for it as a DoT at the time anyway). No one seems to ask for anything else SB WHM had. People here ask for new things for WHM, but not from SB itself. So if we took EW WHM and just added Aero 3 and had it upgrade to Banish and that make everyone happy, I'd be fine with it, even if I personally wouldn't care as much for Banish being there, I'd consider it an acceptable compromise.

As for the designs:

I could give you four distinct healer designs RIGHT NOW. And have. So that isn't that difficult. The fact two of them are what the healer designs were before (SCH and AST), one of them is borrowing/reviving a former ability it lost (WHM), and one of them would (if I was building it) be borrowing heavily from another Job designed by this team (RDM's cast mechanics), it wouldn't require much. Hell, all the DPS Jobs are designed to feel and play differently, and they're designed by this same team. Or they could oursource designs, like how Ty offered a SGE one.

And if we didn't want SB SCH - I proposed a SCH design before that everyone seemed to find pretty acceptable (SCH is my second most played healer), so got you covered there, too.

[Icecylee]

(what's the point of Adderstings, though, since Toxicon isn't actually a damage increase and you seem to have a lot of other movement tools?)

It's easy to forget because the game itself doesn't really explain it, but generally speaking Spell/Weapon Skills are your GCD buttons, and Abilities are oGCDs. So I'm pretty sure this version of toxicon is supposed to be ogcd and therefore a damage increase (esp with the 1s recast)

[ty_taurus]

I'm going to address the Sage discussions over on the supervillain thread since that's where I posted that updated take and have been discussing it there.

EDIT: I'll get back to it later. My computer crashed while I was writing and I have things to do tonight.