How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[Thurmnmurmn]

I almost stood up and clapped when he said he can't stand people who don't want to improve. Preach.

A bit late on this. Just got around to watching it.

[Thurmnmurmn]

Well if you want a good laugh, he cited Misshapen Chair (who keeps on making amazing videos) however that's not his most recent video, as he just made another good one recently, and one of the lines that got a lot of feedback was "I don’t think putting two more dps buttons on healers will brick the game".

Available at https://youtu.be/RrUZmhtbPQ0?si=09bgOF_eAU0buBJB made just over a week ago. Enjoy!

Last comment was replying to this. Mobile fat finger didn't get reply to quote.

[Renathras]

I'm not going to pull out numbers that you don't intend to read again....

Because the numbers are not the argument, and never have been.

I said this to you before, my concern is not parsing, my concern is clearing the content I clear now playing as I play now, since that's the "accommodation" - that the goal is for people who are bored to not be bored, not to change things for anyone else who isn't.

If the gap is narrow, this works. If the gap is wide, we run into problems. This is an argument of encounter balance, not raw numbers in vacuum.

If encounters are based on the lower end, then things are unchanged for players who continue on as they do today, and I'm fine. The problem is, high end players will complain - we've seen it with Thaleia. With the average high end player party effectively having ~25% of an additional DPSers' worth of damage in their party, bosses will fall over for them, leading to complaints that bosses and enrages are too easy. High end players may never see an actual enrage at that point. That's a pretty big margin for your DPSers to underperform and you still get clears by accident.

On the other hand, if enrages are based on the higher end, then people who play today as they do today will not clear the same content they clear now. This is actively taking something away - hurting them - the thing you say wouldn't happen. So either the high end players would now be bored in a new way (bosses dying too easily) OR players who continue to play as they do today would not clear the content they're clearing now, which means they would be harmed and now you have to address that by...well, giving them more damage. Either by narrowing the gap (hence my position) or by nerfing boss HP/enrages (leading to the upset high end players).

Do you understand now?

[Aravell]

Do you understand now?

You seem to have this idea stuck in your head that they have to balance for either the peak or the canyon, have you ever considered that they can balance for the average? That literally does not bother either group because it's the middle of both. There's nothing that says they have to balance for top end or lowest end.

Also, you're completely ignoring Yoshi P's statement that they don't even balance fights with healer dps in mind.

You also avoided my question of whether you even understand the meaning of "elitist".

[Renathras]

Could only guess from the quote snippets, but it has certainly took you long enough. Theirs is literally the same energy as this post describing.

There is no common ground.

/sigh

Good god, people need to learn to read:

Strange, where did I complain about 2%?

I complained about 10% and 20%.

Or did you mean when I was quoting someone pointing out that complaining about 2% is the equivalent of complaining about crit variance?

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Personally I did not like the healer design in WoW very much, especially the rule that you would have to stand around doing nothing for 5 seconds until your MP starts regenerating was a killjoy.
Regardless, here's another idea: Similarly to PvP, create designated kits for High-End content.

You know, I was thinking about something like this last night just skimming through my PvP abilities. There are even already systems in the game for this, like Criterion Actions. And as we've seen from Bozja and Eureka, they can implement a ton of those. The question is less how flexible it can be and more concerns like balance and stuff. BLU shows they can make significantly more complex (and variable) things if they want to.

This would make it so much more difficult to make the leap into raiding for new players. PVP needs different actions because it's fundamentally a different game.

To be fair, so is Ultimate raiding, and to a point Savage. And to a (much lesser) extent, probably Extremes. It's not like people clearing Ultimates are playing like people clearing MSQ and 24 mans only are for the most part.

[Renathras]

I don't think they actually have to go full-on pruning on OGCD stuff, I think they could be repurposed to bring resource management back as a healer system. If they add MP costs or limit them in other ways, most of the OGCD stuff can stay as they would feed into the mini-game of resource management. Of course, in an ideal world, the strongest OGCDs should have the heftiest costs so they would be actual last resorts.

Agreed with this. I'm...not sure any oGCDs in the game have MP costs, but there's no reason they COULDN'T. Trade MP for responsiveness and a potent effect. Pneuma is a GCD that has an MP cost while having a CD, so I can't think of any reason oGCDs couldn't work that way as well. Aside from the ones directly tied to a resource (Lilies, Aetherflow), maybe, the rest having MP costs would make more choice between "Use Prognosis with a 2 sec cast at 600 MP for 300 potency of healing or use Ixochole as an instant cast oGCD weave but with a 1000 MP cost" is actually a decision, where, right now, there's no case Ixochole isn't the better answer in pretty much any content.

(just for a certain little shit,

You're fortunate I'm not a hall monitor personality type. Pretty sure that's a TOS violation.

I, too, play all roles, and often have to fill for DPS since people don't want to do it and apparently it's boring. And occasionally Tanking since that is too stressful for a lot of people. Anecdote is anecdote, I guess.

Seriously though, I'd question just how much experience you actually have on this matter or if it's just your opinion/preference and little else?

To be fair, what determines someone's fun IS opinion/preference, is it not? So when advocating for designs to be fun (to the person), that's the only thing that actually IS relevant in the end: Is it fun (for them) to play or isn't it.

I think the focus needs to be much more on making the healer role feel needed, valued and powerful again. I get that people prefer self-sustain versus being reliant on few others but the degree this has taken on is simply depressing. It feels to me like, taking P11S as an example, two healers are only brought because its a habit and there are mechanics that need to target two non-tank players predictably.

The push for mitigations and shields surely has not helped this either because it makes pure healers ever more obsolete. Looking at Criterion, to bring a pure healer is actually a liability compared to a shield healer.

Absolutely agreed with...all of this.

It's one thing for a PLD to be able to drag themselves through a 4 man boss fight while tanking their DPS to keep themselves and one DPSer alive, it's quite another for a WAR + DNC + SAM to go through an entire 4 man dungeon with their healer AFK at the zone-in with out noticing much difference, or for Ultimate encounters to have such (relatively) little healing that a party of just Tanks and DPS can heal all they actually need to.

I just feel that it really sounds like Stormblood job design is the most ideal middle ground for what everyone wants. Not as complex as HW, but not so drastically simplified as ShB/EW?

SOOOOMEwhat. SB WHM was horrible design. See this thread if you're curious: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined...

...studiously avoided because it kind of exposes the lie that SB was peak healer design, as it wasn't for WHM specifically. EW WHM + Aero 3 would be better design than SB WHM.

Now, if we were talking SCH and AST SB designs? That I more or less agree with, though there are some post-SB things worth keeping, like Expedience and Microcosmos.

Also, for reference: Tank ques are still mostly instant other than for 24 mans, where DPS actually have the fastest ques. Healer Jobs/players as a percentage of the playerbase were lowest in Stormblood, I think it was, from what little public data there is. Objectively less people played healers in SB than any other expansion, and more play healers in EW than did in ShB and SB. That's probably the Dev logic for keeping healers the way they are. That and it makes tuning encounters easier for them. <_<

Maybe they saw the data on 'percentage of playerbase playing healer as their main' drop and panicked, not realizing 'yeh that was probably because you added RDM and SAM in the same expansion, two VERY highly revered jobs from older games, so of course some healers would change mains to one of those two and not go back'.

Honestly, the first part of that is a good chunk of it. Release two DPS Jobs in an expansion with no healers or tanks, ques will go nutty. I'm genuinely shocked they think it's a good idea to do again in DT, but...we'll see how THAT works out, I guess. Viper as a pirate/swashbuckler/rogue and Green Mage having a cult following and, if a DoT mage like old SMN; collectively those two could hit us with SB era ques all over again.

Disagree on your assessment of SB WHM. The problem wasn't WHM being a "pure healer" in SB. The problem was the mechanics of WHM were STUPID on SB. 20% chance of generating a Confession stack by casting Cure 1 on people? 50% chance of generating a Lily by casting Cure 1 on people AND the Lily didn't do anything but lower the CD of the next Benison, Assize, or Asylum cast (and woe be unto those who had to cast Benison and waste 3 Lilies on an all of 6 second shorter CD)? Those were HORRIBLE design mechanics. Even once they changed Confession stacks to be based on using AOE heals, then it was just "How much would you like to overheal for today, sir?", which wasn't a matter of being a pure healer, it was a matter of bad mechanics. Current Plenary, for example, is way more useful since it is just a flat healing buff to AOE heals without all the dancing around stacks, and current Lilies are probably the best change ever made to WHM.

Also, "water spells"? You mean that one oGCD that had a knockback and root? Recall in SB is when they removed the damage component from Fluid Aura, meaning as a "middle ground", SB WHM didn't use Fluid Aura in combat.

...I gotta stop being so invested in this stuff, these posts are getting too long

Heh, now you know how I feel. "One of us! One of us!"

Not to turn a healer thread into a BLU thread lol, but...

Fair point about not being able to cancel. I love Passage of Arms and Collective Unconscious. I hate that the only "right" way to use them is to "flash" them. I remember my first E8S clear using and holding Passage of Arms as the soft enrage intensified and the healers were being overwhelmed. Was an oddly good feeling of blocking/protecting for my party while they were able to finish off the boss's health. That's those "moments of epicness" that I think games should strive for, not limit. Flip side: Pressing a button then having to sit there and bite your fingernails watching your party try to finish the encounter is kind of less fulfilling than it could be (I've seen an argument for letting PLD use Shield Bash while under PoA without it breaking the effect so that they can at least do SOMEthing).

I liked ARR SMN gameplaywise, I just thought thematically it was a bad SMN...

I agree, though I think the Job just got worse with each expansion basically bolting something on. ShB SMN was not a work of art, it was a work of accident. It WORKED, but in the way a person dropping cards one by one from a 3 story building managed to build a house of cards by accident, and one risking total collapse each time they roll the dice adding another to it.

...but, that doesn't matter in the sense I believe that people DID like it, and thus at the very least that playstyle should have been preserved, even if it was through a new Job being added (e.g. Green Mage DoT mage maybe...?). Because I genuinely believe the game can accommodate all types of players and we can all enjoy this shared space together, but that requires Jobs being different in play and appealing to those different types of players.

I absolutely love current SMN, but I feel it either should have been a new Job added (Evoker? Could even have had it split from ACN just like SMN does if they wanted to go that route) OR taken the old SMN's gameplay and copied it into a new Job so at least the playstyle persisted (e.g. take all the abilities, change them to just poison/virus/biohazard/etc theme instead of egi/pet themed, and introduced Green Mage with EW with the DoT playstyle minus Bahamut and Phoenix; hell, they could have even kept the pet theming by making them Voidsent or something for it).

That is, I'm not a fan of...have you ever read the Sword of Truth/Legend of the Seaker books?

In it, the system of magic has two halves, positive magic and negative. The simplest example was given in the book by the wizard making his beard grow longer (adding to/positive magic). He then started to shave and was asked why he didn't just make it grow shorter, and he replied that powerful as he is, he can only use positive magic (adding to), he can't use negative magic (taking away from).

I think Job design, evolution, and addition over time in a game should always abide by the principle of positive magic: It should always add to what was before, not take away.

Hell, if we had that today, we could have EW WHM and SB SCH coexisting side by side and this entire thread would probably not exist.

It's why I say grabbing a bunch of stuff that was removed from SCH in ShB and readding it to the kit would be nice, but taking all three healers and shoving them into SB kits would not. The latter is just another form of negative magic - taking away without replacing - just like changing SMN without adding Green Mage did.

The reason why I asked in this thread in specific, that healing is a binary functionality. You need heals until the HP bars are full, which is something already achievable with probably a single oGCD from both healers. So, in that front... there's literally nothing else to add without being redundant.

Right, but this is as true as damage dealing abilities. You don't need a new damage button to do damage, your existing buttons do. As long as boss health/enrage is tuned around your existing buttons, you don't need to ever add a new damage button. Adding a new one also results in boss health/enrages being increased, meaning you HAVE to use them to do the same (relative/effective) performance you did before. GNB got Double Down, but boss health increased so using Double Down doesn't kill, say, P4S any faster than NOT having Double Down in E4S. The encounters shift to your kit, so you're not actually gaining anything, you're running in place.

Part of the reason we're in the mess we're in with healing is because Tank mitigation ISN'T capped. Tanks have so much mitigation (and sustain) now that it borderline makes healers unnecessary. Clearly they have "too much". So that doesn't work.

And DPSers having more filler doesn't mean you need new abilities, it means the existing abilities need to be retuned to have more use in the downtime phase. For example, NIN is super busy in burst but then has a lax downtime. Why? Because it doesn't have enough damage abilities? Surely not, it has more abilities than the average Job (34 or something like that; average is ~32-33). Give NIN a new big damage button with a 1 or 2 min CD and what happens? It just gets added to the burst phase. Instead, existing buttons need to have different CDs. Instead of everything being 2 min and a few things being 1 min, it needs some of those CDs changed to 40 sec. For example, imagine if TCJ's CD was 40 sec instead of 120 sec. Now you'd use it in the opener, use it twice in filler over the next two minutes to break up the 1-2-3 spam with a little quick paced Ninjusu magic, and then it would still line up with the 2 min burst. So even without breaking out of the 2 min meta, you'd get more action points. Alternatively, 30 sec abilities.

The problem isn't that DPS Jobs don't have enough DPS buttons. The problem is that their CDs are all 1 min or 2 min, meaning outside of those mini-burst and main-burst windows, you have a pretty boring filler of "upkeep personal buff" and "don't overcap gauge".

That's been a staple in this game since the beginning and everyone will tell you that.

A lot of people will SAY that, but it's never really been true. WHM in ARR wasn't a Job focused only (or totally) on DPS, and DPSing was NOT more important than healing, not even for SCH.

That's not "all a healer needs", that's "all a DPSer wanting to play a healer needs".

I almost stood up and clapped when he said he can't stand people who don't want to improve. Preach.

A bit late on this. Just got around to watching it.

The problem is he does in that video what you guys do: Only seems to think there's one kind of improvement - improving your DPS rotation.

People wanting to improve something else; what are they?

You seem to have this idea stuck in your head that they have to balance for either the peak or the canyon, have you ever considered that they can balance for the average?

Same problem. Balance for the middle and the lower half that can clear content now no longer will be able to, thus leading to them being harmed/bothered.

It doesn't work unless you balance to the bottom.

And while I agree with Yoshi P's statement, as you are well aware, people have consistently pointed out it is balanced around.

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I didn't avoid your question, it's not relevant. That said, for what it's worth, if you believe people should do worse than you and should not be clearing content, that is elitist by the gaming definition and commonly accepted general meaning of the term. Don't go playing dictionary police now, you know exactly what I meant by it because of the common use/definition.

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EDIT:

Well...maybe the length is shorter/better. Hm...

[Aravell]

It doesn't work unless you balance to the bottom.

Uh huh, doesn't work according to who? Why are your anecdotes any more important than anyone else's? The only argument you have against any of this is that you've been in some parties that didn't work out. But if we look at things logically, a good player will balance out a bad player, meaning balancing for the middle will have the highest chance of pleasing everyone. Also, full grey teams can still clear extremes, we're talking about extremes here, not the content that casuals won't even touch, like week 1 savage and ultimates.

I didn't avoid your question, it's not relevant. That said, for what it's worth, if you believe people should do worse than you and should not be clearing content, that is elitist by the gaming definition and commonly accepted general meaning of the term. Don't go playing dictionary police now, you know exactly what I meant by it because of the common use/definition.

Even if you use the gaming definition, you're still wrong. I never once said people should be doing worse than me and that people who do worse than me shouldn't be clearing content, you can try and quote me where I said that, go ahead, I'll wait. The only thing I said is that skill ceiling should be higher and that mastery should be rewarded, anything other than that is just your made-up caricature of me.

Alternatively, if you're cool with labeling people things they're not now, then I'll give you the label of Sylphie. If you tell me that's not cool and you're not a Sylphie, then you're kind of a hypocrite because it's now a "rules for thee but not for me" situation. But if you're willing to apologise for the label, I'll drop it entirely, your move.

[WaxSw]

The lower end are getting carried by the extra gear they and their teammates have, not their skills. They would still be able to clear as fine as they do now (as proven by how wide is the gap between top and bottom dps of healers) and some could argue even better because the dilution of damage across a wider array of skills reduces the dps loss that a gcd heal (which is what these healers use to heal) has.

I find really funny that discussion arises for healers when asked to put a fraction of the effort that tanks and dps are required to clear any content with enrage. We are rarely asked to optimize our tools or keep track of cds or job mechanics to do our job unless you want to optimize while they do and there are zero complaints on their end. This design really babies healers to a fault.

But to not divert the discussion, the enrage problem is really a non issue. The only places where that really matters from a perspective of gating lower skilled players are ultimates and week 1 savage. Ultimates are pieces of content that those players dont interact with and week 1 savage is called week 1 for a reason, as stronger gear gets available for the players, the easier the enrage becomes, making less skilled/optimized players capable of clearing and this is something that wont change regardless of how many tools we add.

[Zairava]

Same problem. Balance for the middle and the lower half that can clear content now no longer will be able to, thus leading to them being harmed/bothered.

It doesn't work unless you balance to the bottom.

And while I agree with Yoshi P's statement, as you are well aware, people have consistently pointed out it is balanced around.

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I didn't avoid your question, it's not relevant. That said, for what it's worth, if you believe people should do worse than you and should not be clearing content, that is elitist by the gaming definition and commonly accepted general meaning of the term. Don't go playing dictionary police now, you know exactly what I meant by it because of the common use/definition.

I'm probably wasting my time, but whatever, I want to get my voice in while we have time before Dawntrail launch.

What makes this so impossible? They ALREADY did during Stormblood when they made cleric stance a role action.

I'm absolute trash at healers beyond maybe EX. You will never see me doing healer in savage and above running it because I do not trust myself with it, not even in its current state.

This isn't about "making it so that others can clear content but I can", it's about making it more fun for everyone.

You get your one gcd spell, and you get your DoT. That. is. it. There's NOTHING to learn past that unless you consider sage's Addersting some complex war machina level of thought. It inherently makes the leveling process more boring than it needs to be because, get this, they make normal mode content so mind-numbingly easy it doesn't need all the healing in your over-bloated healing kits unless your party is eating the dirt from the ground, and even then we have so much mitigation in the way of utility from other roles it hardly even matters. Use mits, use 2-3 healing spells (which don't often necessitate GCD healing), done. This goes for both single target and aoe.

I'm a part of the "silent majority" of healers people love bringing up because I mostly just level them and only heal when I feel like healing for friends because I don't want my brain cell count to decrease more than it already has. Plus I lurk here. Even for someone who has than brain capacity of a fly regarding healers. I am the below-average.

Every single time, without fail, I see healer discussion get interrupted for this ridiculous belief it absolutely 100% has to be designed around the lowest common denominator of players. I do not want that, I do not want healing to be "damage neutral" because that removes the entire premise of healing in exchange for dps.

I've seen people do what should be considered entire math thesis's at this point and it still doesn't satisfy you. It never has and never will.

I do not need to have things so completely infantilized so that I can clear savage and ultimate down to the value of 1 dps on the meter. I couldn't care less how much damage I'm doing as a healer. What I want is for healers to be fun across the board, not just in high-end content, but in casual play too. I don't need to hear about "subjective/objective", I don't need to hear "oh well SOME HEALERS". no.

I am objectively below average with healers and I'm still bored when I play them despite barely touching them because they provide me with literally nothing more to learn. Having a couple extra dps abilities isn't going to kill me, I will still clear normal mode content just fine. DPS checks in normal mode content have been trivial since Shadowbringers. If people don't like the tighter dps checks or higher difficulty of high-end content, regardless of any role they play, they will simply take their leave. Just as I have taken my leave of healing ever in high-end. I don't want the healers who want even the slightest amount of raising to the skill ceiling to be ignored just because players like me exist. They simply will not do a massive increase in healing needed, I would be genuinely surprised if they did. So I will settle for a couple more dps abilities while throwing the forbidden numbers in the toilet.

[Renathras]

Long one, lots to catch up on, sorry to all in advance there is no TLDR...

Maybe. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm inclined to think that ISN'T the case because of other similar comments done in the past. Not to mention I wasn't insisting much of anything at the time other than saying I feel like a difference of 1% is more in the ballpark of working. And yeah, "Crit variance + ridiculous aligned party buffing: What could EVER possibly go wrong?!"

1) You could argue that, but keep in mind you're having a discussion with someone. So when they're using a term or statement, you have to consider what THEY mean by it, not what you MIGHT mean by it. And if there's confusion and they lay out what they mean clearly, then you should use that (it's why I was harping on that "no effort" thing a few pages ago; clearly there's disagreement on what that means, meaning discussion participants need to clearly and explicitly define what they mean by the term in question - something I did but the other person and their heckler groupie did not). Your definition there is also bad since "philosophy" isn't a playstyle or mechanic, and the context made it more or less clear what I was getting at, and even if it didn't, I explicitly laid it out when it was clear there was confusion on the point. And yes, the way I worded it looked at it, Dia early refresh would be a DPS loss. Of course, in that case, we're talking about making something even easier/simpler to manage, but it would apply.

The reason NOT to use the "scalable" position is that that isn't comparing play now to play post-change. It's comparing play post-change to play post-change. If the argument is "this should appeal to people who enjoy play now", then it has to compare against how they play NOW. Now "how" as in a philosophical sense, but how as in a mechanical sense, as your proposed changes are mechanical/to Job abilities, not (exactly) philosophical. While your desire for them is philosophical, the changes themselves, and what content people will and won't be able to clear, are game mechanics/mechanical arguments.

2) Medica thing - you wouldn't have to use it ALL the time. You could have 10% or so downtime and still clear. Argument remains the same. This is a case of arguing a technicality to avoid arguing a point. The point being people would be pissed if they, as DPSers, were called on to have a non-DPS thing as something they still need to frequently engage in. Some people, mind you, would love it. A lot of people, though, would hate it. You'd hear "I play a DPS Job BECAUSE I don't like healing" all over the place, and I suspect you know/agree. A lot of Tanks complain that they're just budget DPSers now. For all the Healer players asking for Tank-level damage rotations, ask the Tanks and a lot of them will tell you they don't like being a "DPS at home" and want more buttons and gameplay related to enmity management, boss positioning, and defensive/sustain, not more DPS buttons or a DPS rotation. Again, there are some that DO like it (and that's what GNB was specifically designed to tap into), but not all of the people in the role feel that way.

3) "if we wanted it to be the absolute most bland stale bread possible". Yes please. Requiescat should just be part of something else, probably Confetior. It shouldn't be a separate button. Nor should Goring Blade. Reading the threads on the PLD changes, most people agree with those positions.

4) BoE is also (if I remember right, I have slept since reading your proposal. Several times.) a damage boosting ability, consuming gauge to enable a DPS burst combo. PoM is already that with less steps/annoyance. And aside, I genuinely think PoM having a 1 min CD would be good. Hell, tack on SB Cleric's 5% damage increase and throw in a 5% healing increase for funzies, I'm flexible. WHM gets a NIN-like Trick Attack self buff on a 1 min CD that just so happens can also be used for healing. I'm down with that. The difference with BoE/Q/T/F vs Lilies/Misery is that the latter does it with less buttons, does it by healing (mostly), and doesn't require several dedicated GCDs to it, as it's really flexible when you use Solace/Rapture in your rotation. You can use them like clockwork every 20 sec or you can use them strategically as movement tools or dump them all at once before Misery. BoE/Elements doesn't have that functionality, and is tied to a charged gauge which is dependent on your DPS uptime.

I mean, you said the same thing. TECHNICALLY there is optimization with PoM, we just don't use it that way. For example, in an imaginary world where PoM was a 1 min CD with 2 charges and the 2 min meta didn't exist, WHMs could use it for movement heavy periods of fights and/or frequent damage periods of fights instead of holding for burst phases. AST has this same problem with Lightspeed, this amazing ability that...in practice is held for burst phases because of AST's otherwise nearly unmanageable hyper weaving during burst phases. Lucid is a similar situation where you kind of use it somewhat on CD (or at 80% MP), you don't save it for deaths and raises, so it's not necessarily there when you need it to allow for on the fly adaptation or strategic uses. As for Assize/Water - the problem is more dungeons doesn't bloat your hotbars. More dungeons means less scenery overlap and more boss encounters and gear. A second button that you use slightly more often doesn't really offer a lot. Further, going from 2 to 1 dungeon is taking something away (negative magic) where making a low level Water that upgrades into Assize isn't taking anything away. If anything, WHM NEEDS more low level versions of spells. Probably all the healers do.

I consistently praise WAR design because the entire rotation is more or less established by level 50. What happens after that is not a lot of new abilities, but mostly abilities upgrading into better forms. This gives a feeling of becoming more powerful while not really disrupting the muscle memory flow that you train, and it doesn't feel as jarring to sync to 50 from 90 on WAR because you still have MOST of your rotational abilities. The only thing you lose from your single target rotation is Onslaught (which is a weave anyway, so doesn't break your cadence) and Primal Rend. Inner Chaos and Fell Cleave are Inner Beast upgrades. You already have Infuriate at 50. You already have Steel Cyclone. The only real change to cadence is Infuriate comes off CD slightly faster, but that's something you're already watching to not overcap anyway. Most of the changes you get are defensive CDs, and if they swapped Vengeance with Raw Intuition in the leveling rotation, even that wouldn't change much since that's WAR's go-to right there.

Contrast with RPR, which feels REALLY empty and quite different at 50 from 90. And if it's unfair to include a Job that doesn't start until level 70, look at NIN. At level 50, you have no Ninki, no Ninki spenders, no TCJ, no Meisui, no Raijus, no ARMOR CRUSH...meaning you have to manually burn Ninjutsu as spoken for to maintain Huton. Imagine if WAR didn't get Storm's Eye until later. (Granted, it's just level 54, but still means you don't have it if you get CT or MSQ roulette). It's not COMPLETELY a different Job, but compared to WAR, it plays pretty differently at 50 than 90.

Healers are noticeably bad at this because some don't get their core mechanics until late. WHM doesn't get Misery until the 70s, and doesn't even get Solace until 52. Getting Solace at 18 and a low level version of Misery around then would completely change how the Job feels when syncing and leveling. So having a "Fluid Aura" as a bubble that bursts around you upgrading into Assize would hardly be jarring. "Now your self-centered big CD AOE does healing, too, isn't that lovely?"

5) To be fair, they probably wouldn't say "so we readed Aero 3". They'd just add it and have it upgrade to Banish, and BANISH is the ability they'd show off in the trailer. "Look everyone, a new powerful AOE spell that also is a DoT on the enemy and a DPS gain in single target breaking up glarespam" would probably go over pretty well. Not to mention people love twirly-staff animation to this day. Watching that video in this thread https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined... (Shameless plug, I know, video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwQjhCQFu0Y ), one thing that got me was watching the video playing in the background as the guide author narrates and goes through the WHM SB abilities (that's where I "remembered" Fluid Aura was changed to do no damage in SB), and I keep seeing the Aero 3 animation. You know I dislike DoTs, but damnit if I don't want that animation back for SOMEthing, as it's just a cool animation. Hell, at this point, they could make a 2 sec trailer showing JUST the WHM up close casting SOMEthing (that you don't see because it's out of frame) and the twirly-staff animation and people would probably lose their minds, you know?