You're absolutely right. I know you've replied to me some, and you might not have noticed it, but I do this more and more. Where before I might have spent pages, now I'm far quicker to "Here's my response, say whatever you will, I'm moving on" from things.
I will note this, though: EVERY single time that ANYONE has called out the people attacking me - "Guys, we're trying to have a discussion and you're dogpiling on Ren, stop it please." - it stops instantly. The people are cowed and stop when they realize the public ISN'T on their side. It's happened on exactly two occasions I can remember, but people were suddenly very well behaved and threads stopped being derailed...indicating I'm not the one that derails things and makes them about me. But it requires someone else to say it. And that's only happened two times.
Otherwise, especially with their posts getting likes, they think everyone supports their derailing and heckling, so they continue. But it is amazing how ONE person standing up and saying "You guys are the problem, not him, please stop" brings it to a complete end and gets people to act like mature adults and discuss things fairly and in good faith.
But I am trying, more and more, to just do that. I do give a response - I don't like letting lies or accusations sit unchallenged - but after that, moving on or putting replies into HBs so they are out of the main discussion. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the hecklers are determined and will keep egging me on even if I completely stop responding to them (one thread, I had a person quoting every one of my posts and digging at me, even though I wasn't replying to literally anything they were saying). But I am trying to do that more.
...it'd still be nice if, now and again, people DID call out the hecklers, though. Not in a mean way, just a polite "Guys, he's trying to engage with the topic, instead of being mean to him, you should, too." or the like. A man can dream...
...and yet, the difference between a good and bad BLM is far larger than between a good and bad SMN. The difference will always exist, but the gap is relevant, and the more complex a Job is, the wider that gap gets. The point here is that the wider that gap is, the more people slipping up makes content unclearable, and that's bad. The wider the gap is, the more it punishes people on the bottom end of it (in terms of getting clears) for playing as they do now, and that's also bad. Your numbers seemed to indicate a gap of around 7-10% for a person using Glare and Dia every 30 sec, and that's...a big gap.
We will disagree on what "the straightforward healer" looks like. That's going to be a thing. The question I have is more this:
Would you prefer healers stay as they are or get something like the 4 Healers Model where at least some of them are to a complexity of your liking?
It's not a false choice - if the playerbase doesn't agree, then the Devs are very much likely to stick to the default/status quo, and I believe based on your past pessimistic comments about their design direction, you know this. As a compromise, it means people like me who enjoy healing now would continue to do so, and people like you who want more damage to juggle in your downtime would have that opportunity. If the alternative was ShB 3.0 in DT, would you prefer that? I think you wouldn't, but perhaps you would.
Also, "It's just a shortened DoT and a 15s CD"?
In bold are all the things that AREN'T "just a shortened DoT and a 15s CD".New gauge element, goes from 0-100 by using non-Lily damage and heal actions, I call it the 'Nature gauge' because no imagination
Glare now gives 1 gauge
Dia now 12s duration, 150 on cast + 70p per tick (total 430). Gives 5 total gauge over it's duration
Water/Banish added, instantcast 15s CD, 40p stronger than the relative Stone/Glare level, gives 5 gauge on cast
Maybe a shielding Lily spender (400p ST/250p AOE), down with the pure/barrier split it sucks
New healing move, Blessing of the Elementals, costs 50 'Nature gauge', 500p instantcast AOE heal GCD, grants a stack of each of Rage of the River, Wrath of the Winds, Ire of the Earth
Quake, upgrades from Glare/Stone while under 'Ire of the Earth', is 100p stronger
Tornado, upgrades from Aero/Dia while under 'Wrath of the Winds', is 30p stronger on cast and 20p per tick (total 110)
Flood, upgrades from Water/Banish while under 'Rage of the River', is 100p stronger
THAT.
SAID:
Isn't this the proposal you had once where I said something to the effect of "Replace Assize with Water/Banish, scrap the gauge and just have Presence of Mind upgrade into Blessing of the Elements, and we've got a deal"? I may even have suggested a 60 sec CD for PoM/BoE so we'd get to interact with it more frequently.
I don't want another Faerie Gauge situation. Just make it PoM and replace Assize with Water/Banish. I'd be up for that, and this feels like deja vu me having said this before... Like...I DISTINCTLY remember suggesting replacing Assize with a GCD like that for the third element once somewhere, and I think it was in reply to one of your ideas... (I also suggested it somewhere else, but that was a second time.) I've also suggested having Water/Holy be a thing before, but that was separate.
Alsoalso: Agree with down with the barrier/pure divide, though you already know my solution to that is Pro/Shell being added to Plenary - something I believe you said you agreed with? We don't need a new Lily spender for that, we could just do THAT. And we already have a single target barrier with Benison. Just have Temperance give an AOE barrier and you've got that end covered, too.
Quick hits since the rest we've already laid out and there's nothing else to really say:
1% would need to be the gap. We've seen Jobs dropped from content for less.
It's not skewing average to above average, that IS the average. One thing high end players often lose sight of is how exceptional they are. When I get captured on the site (I don't run a parser myself), my runs are usually green/blue for Extremes and gray/green for Savage, but in the 24 mans, they're blue/purple. I think I'm just doing "average" things (like keeping the GCD running), but turns out those are actually ABOVE average things. Setting aside that ilevel and crit variance DOES apply (I'm always going to be doing less damage than someone in full Savage in a farm/parse party), this is still a relevant gap to consider when discussing changes to the game.
You can argue about whether that should be or not, but as I and others have said before, the game does not teach people things like rotations. The only Jobs that do so are the intuitive ones like SMN, and they're routinely badmouthed by...high end players (despite being wildly popular with everyone else - probably for that reason). The vast majority of the playerbase isn't reading offline guides on encounters or rotations, or anything outside of the game at all. That has to be factored into any changes, so the numbers used in analysis need to reflect that portion of the playerbase as well.
Again, the changes don't ONLY affect Savage players, so you can't ONLY consider Savage players when discussing and talking about them.
And therein lies the rub.
If you say oGCDs, the people that like mostly weaving oGCDs and not having to hardcast heals will get upset.
If you say GCD heals, the people that don't like oGCDs will get upset, and people will point out this would make the gap between beginner and expert huge and likely make even normal content unclearable for many parties (since you've now gotten rid of beginner go-to heals and emergency fall-back heals).
For every ability you mention removing, you will find defenders. I once suggested combining Fey Blessing and Whispering Dawn so it gets an upfront heal and then a HoT and was told that's terrible since it would remove the flexibility of two separate abilities, "dumb down" SCH healing, and so on. There are people that defended Lustrate, there are people that defended Aetherpact. About the only button no one will defend is Benfic 1 (Cure 1 has SLIGHTLY different use cases than Cure 2, and Physic is needed for SCH's in the level 35-50 range of healing AND does more raw healing than Adlo does), and possibly Medica 1 (Medica 2 does the same healing with the base heal + initial tick).
Oh, then you have the people that will insist nothing less than 48 buttons is a problem.
...this is another reason that my 4 Healers Model idea has merit, since it allows each group to have some redress...
If you replace Assize with Water/Banish and have PoM upgrade into BoE (and, again, dump the gauge idea - seriously, too many Jobs have a 0-100 gauge, it's dumb, we don't need more), you could do this without adding a single button. If you then had Cure 1 upgrade into Cure 2 or Medica 1 into Medica 2 (lower M2's MP cost by 100 and up its initial potency to equal M1's and it's a flat upgrade with no downside) and you even clock in at the magic 32 mark.
I also gave you suggestions for SCH: Ruin 2 -> Miasma and Energy Drain -> Shadowflare. I wasn't doing that in jest.
The other two I have more or less written off at this point, so...an if it harm none, do as thou will, so to speak. (4 Healers Model is the "harm none(fewest possible)" in this case. And I MOSTLY agree with you that your WHM proposal might satisfy that...with a smidge of massaging, allowing "do as thou will" with the others.)
I absolutely agree with this. One reason I love stuff like Soil/Kerochole is because they have short CDs. Not short enough you can 100% uptime them, but short enough you have access to them most any time you think about them. Contrast things like Temperance/Lilybell or the like which have long CDs so you don't have that availability. GNB gets a mini burst every 1 min and a micro burst every 30 sec and it feels really good compared to options that are on 2 min cycles.
I actually HAVE used Aquaveil quite a bit this expansion. I do think it might not need to be a separate button, however. For example, at level 86, Tetra could have upgraded to Aquaveil (heal + mitigation), which is how Taurochole works itself. Exaltation could have come from Essential Dignity in a similar vein, or Celestial Intersection. Protraction...is actually more unique. But something like cutting it to 5% and having Lustrate upgrade to adding that effect. Would give Lustrate a bit more of a use case outside of "if you need healing RIGHT this second, everything else is too slow or on CD, and you still have one Aetherflow left...", which would be a good thing even if it was only used in niche situations (so is Protraction anyway!)



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