Crazy Idea: Split SCH from ARC and make it a 30+ job like HW

[Supersnow845]

The only advantage I can see from this is having a second healer accessible at level 1. WHM Is literally the worst healer to start with because it teaches all the wrong habits

We desperately need another healer accessible at 1

[Gemina]

We still wouldn't get a second healer choice at lv1. OP has stated that SCH would still be an expansion job that starts at 30. Also not exactly sure what bad habits WHM teaches at such an early point. Even if SCH did start at level 1, I really don't know what it does all that differently from WHM as their skillset has very few distinctive abilities until 50+. You would need to elaborate.

[Supersnow845]

We still wouldn't get a second healer choice at lv1. OP has stated that SCH would still be an expansion job that starts at 30. Also not exactly sure what bad habits WHM teaches at such an early point. Even if SCH did start at level 1, I really don't know what it does all that differently from WHM as their skillset has very few distinctive abilities until 50+. You would need to elaborate.

If they did this split both should be available at 1 they are both ARR jobs and deserve that

As for WHM creating the wrong habits it’s to do with the fact WHM has no oGCD’s before 50 and the first one it gets to someone who doesn’t know how healers work “feels” like a panic button (benediction). Meanwhile SCH has the fairy to help and by 50 has 3 charges of lustrate, whispering dawn and illumination

You really don’t play shield healers proactively in anything besides high end content. SCH does a much better job of teaching healing habits at low levels than WHM does

[Sjol]

We still wouldn't get a second healer choice at lv1. OP has stated that SCH would still be an expansion job that starts at 30. Also not exactly sure what bad habits WHM teaches at such an early point. Even if SCH did start at level 1, I really don't know what it does all that differently from WHM as their skillset has very few distinctive abilities until 50+. You would need to elaborate.

They could create an alternative class at 1 for SCH to build off of, but I don't think there's enough design space, but that's way more complicated than what I was proposing. I would love for them to rework all the classes out of the game and have us help the guilds as side quests instead, but it would completely break the story and lore up to this point. You would need a reboot of the early content to do something like that which really would be too much work.

If they did this split both should be available at 1 they are both ARR jobs and deserve that

As for WHM creating the wrong habits it’s to do with the fact WHM has no oGCD’s before 50 and the first one it gets to someone who doesn’t know how healers work “feels” like a panic button (benediction). Meanwhile SCH has the fairy to help and by 50 has 3 charges of lustrate, whispering dawn and illumination

You really don’t play shield healers proactively in anything besides high end content. SCH does a much better job of teaching healing habits at low levels than WHM does

The irony with SCH is that you literally get new abilities that are lower level than you can start the job. Summon Eos is level 4, Whispering Dawn is 20. Sub-30 healing is incredibly basic. SCH has 1 GCD heal, 1 oGCD AoE heal, and a fairy that does most of the work. WHM isn't really any different -- just there 1 AoE heal is GCD.

[Katish]

Only in the short-term, and if this were a start-up or actively in a rush and not a 10+ year-old MMO I might agree. But, ignoring design and technical debt in order to focus on "the next release" will eventually kill a product. I've seen it several times at companies I've worked for already. Short-term thinking in order to get out the next feature to please the customer. It's unsustainable and will eventually lead to less and less content per expansion/release.

As someone who works with mmo code on the average, this is exactly what these companies typically do. They work on the next feature continuously and leave backtracking until they have a good enough solution to tackle the entire dilemma. Usually it ends up with a reconstruction of an entire system...or moving to a new engine altogether. But until they have a solution, they manage the features as a hash or some other string indicator(or a flag), allowing them to quickly address what it is they want reconstructed in code should they ever readdress it. These hashes all time dated on when they were applied typically...(usually in a markup language but I have see it done modularly as well.)

Technical debt is not handled the same as compared to your "usual" software companies and it is expected to always be working on the next feature; whatever that feature may be.

[Gemina]

If they did this split both should be available at 1 they are both ARR jobs and deserve that

SCH is technically an expansion job, and was not available until ARR, which is v2.0. For the sake of argument, we'll just say it is an original job to ARR since this has been the starting point for a very long time now. Even so, it is a job, which have a minimum starting point of lv30 for all ARR and HW jobs. Only classes start at level 1, so it would need a starting class of its own, or share it with conjurer.

As for WHM creating the wrong habits it’s to do with the fact WHM has no oGCD’s before 50 and the first one it gets to someone who doesn’t know how healers work “feels” like a panic button (benediction). Meanwhile SCH has the fairy to help and by 50 has 3 charges of lustrate, whispering dawn and illumination

You really don’t play shield healers proactively in anything besides high end content. SCH does a much better job of teaching healing habits at low levels than WHM does

I disagree. I find that it is actually really important for healers to learn to heal this way in the beginning. It is what they will have to resort to if they ever find themselves in a situation where their oGCD abilities have been exhausted by a less than optimal party, which absolutely will happen to them. Plus, abilities like Whispering Dawn, Illumination, and Lustrate will not exempt a SCH from GCD healing in the early levels.

Besides, WHM remains primarily a GCD healer throughout the entirety of its leveling process. Weaving oGCD heals isn't its strength, and it can only do it in a limited capacity. Tetra and Bene are on 60s/180s respectively, and they only get one charge of each. They do get some other skills to help out such as Assize, Asylum, and Bell, but they have nowhere near the same oGCD availability as the other three healers. Lily abilities might be instant and can have their potencies increased, but they will still reset the GCD and cannot be weaved between offensive skills like what the other healers do. You're basically saying WHM is an inferior healer, and that's fine if you feel that way. But I believe the job was intentionally designed to have a low APM. It's a great class/job for beginner to novice players.

[Gemina]

They could create an alternative class at 1 for SCH to build off of, but I don't think there's enough design space, but that's way more complicated than what I was proposing. I would love for them to rework all the classes out of the game and have us help the guilds as side quests instead, but it would completely break the story and lore up to this point. You would need a reboot of the early content to do something like that which really would be too much work.

Yeah, I figured it was a bit off track from what you intended with your suggestion, so I tried to keep things within the guidelines you set. But I also understand what supersnow is saying with there only being one healing class available at level 1. This is kind of a bummer as it is the only role that suffers from this.

[Supersnow845]

SCH is technically an expansion job, and was not available until ARR, which is v2.0. For the sake of argument, we'll just say it is an original job to ARR since this has been the starting point for a very long time now. Even so, it is a job, which have a minimum starting point of lv30 for all ARR and HW jobs. Only classes start at level 1, so it would need a starting class of its own, or share it with conjurer.



I disagree. I find that it is actually really important for healers to learn to heal this way in the beginning. It is what they will have to resort to if they ever find themselves in a situation where their oGCD abilities have been exhausted by a less than optimal party, which absolutely will happen to them. Plus, abilities like Whispering Dawn, Illumination, and Lustrate will not exempt a SCH from GCD healing in the early levels.

Besides, WHM remains primarily a GCD healer throughout the entirety of its leveling process. Weaving oGCD heals isn't its strength, and it can only do it in a limited capacity. Tetra and Bene are on 60s/180s respectively, and they only get one charge of each. They do get some other skills to help out such as Assize, Asylum, and Bell, but they have nowhere near the same oGCD availability as the other three healers. Lily abilities might be instant and can have their potencies increased, but they will still reset the GCD and cannot be weaved between offensive skills like what the other healers do. You're basically saying WHM is an inferior healer, and that's fine if you feel that way. But I believe the job was intentionally designed to have a low APM. It's a great class/job for beginner to novice players.

WHM is fine to teach WHM but it’s bad at teaching the other 3. That’s a problem because WHM is your only accessible healer and a good chunk of people will take the first job they pick to 90 before they do another job. PLD/WAR is good at teaching tanks and the DPS are varied. If they are going to do this 3/1 split on the way healers are designed in terms of GCD healing then the 1 shouldn’t be the only one accessible at level 1. Plus it leads to this weird hesitation people have with shield healers

It fine to be a low APM healer, its just not great at teaching the other healers because they directly encourage oGCD weaving as low as 15/20 while WHM almost never encourages it even at 90

Plus as you said in the other comment in general I just think it’s unfair that there is only one healer accessible at level 1, especially in a role that has a partially enforced split in it

[Gemina]

WHM is fine to teach WHM but it’s bad at teaching the other 3. That’s a problem because WHM is your only accessible healer and a good chunk of people will take the first job they pick to 90 before they do another job. PLD/WAR is good at teaching tanks and the DPS are varied. If they are going to do this 3/1 split on the way healers are designed in terms of GCD healing then the 1 shouldn’t be the only one accessible at level 1. Plus it leads to this weird hesitation people have with shield healers

WHM doesn't need to teach how to play the other healers. You can learn how to play the other healers by playing those healers. Even then, WHM will still give players a general idea of what to expect when taking on the healer role. This has a lot more to do than just the abilities they are given. A healer needs to experience the varied playstyles of the tanks they group up with, the rate incoming damage will drain HP bars, how much their heals restore, how well regen will sustain, raising fallen players, avoiding damage, cleansing, removing doom, using their offensive skills, etc. Weaving heals is but one of several aspects to the healing role. I know everyone loves to dumb the role down here, but an inexperienced healer will fold and crumble like a dried up leaf if they panic when things head south while a cool-headed experienced healer can salvage the same situation without breaking a sweat.

I can't speak to any hesitation with transitioning over the shield healers, but there also isn't anything wrong with focusing on one healer to max level. The only time I see this as a bit of an issue is for job balance with high-end content and being versatile with any given role by having multiple jobs leveled in case your preferred job is already taken by another player.

The lack of a second healer early on is a bit of an oversight by the dev team. It actually doesn't even make sense considering that both PLD and WAR have respective starting classes and at one point were the only tanks available to play. This issue is also a result of tying SCH to a DPS class. In that sense, it does stand to benefit the most from a split, but they would have to design a whole other starting class for it, which would temporarily eat up some resources. I'm just not sure if that is worth it when we have bigger issues going on with our jobs atm.

[Sjol]

As someone who works with mmo code on the average, this is exactly what these companies typically do. They work on the next feature continuously and leave backtracking until they have a good enough solution to tackle the entire dilemma. Usually it ends up with a reconstruction of an entire system...or moving to a new engine altogether. But until they have a solution, they manage the features as a hash or some other string indicator(or a flag), allowing them to quickly address what it is they want reconstructed in code should they ever readdress it. These hashes all time dated on when they were applied typically...(usually in a markup language but I have see it done modularly as well.)

Technical debt is not handled the same as compared to your "usual" software companies and it is expected to always be working on the next feature; whatever that feature may be.

It's not that different from the rest of the software industry in my experience. And I fully acknowledge that this would be part of a much larger rework, potentially removing classes entirely, though SE seems very reluctant to make story changes that large.

I also know that me posting an idea on the forums had a near zero chance of being implemented. This is just for fun. At work we're also always chasing the next feature and flagging off the stuff we don't have the bandwidth to tackle.

I wonder if FFXIV could survive a Cataclysm style reboot. That's where Blizzard ditched a lot of their bad systems. But I imagine the forums here would have a fit at the idea of it, so I stay very far away from any kind of suggestion to do so.