#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[ForsakenRoe]

Take me for example. I didn't even read that change list of yours, as it was much too long for my liking. I would not be happy when I had to figure out all this changes through my tooltips when a new patch drops.

Make it a new job, and I would definitely give it a closer look. Throw my favourite healer in the shredder, and I will be very unhappy.

I would assume that an amount of changes like this, especially considering it'd require UI work (to implement the new gauge element) would be an expansion update, not a random patch. I'd say that this amount of changes is pretty on par with what other jobs sometimes see with expansion changes. SMN and MCH are prime examples, the amount of changes they received for their 6.0 and 5.0 reworks respectively is larger than what I listed for the hypothetical WHM. Or how about the 6.3 PLD rework, that one's a good example, because that happened in a patch instead of an expansion:




A lot of these are just potency tweaks, sure. But it undeniably shook up the rotation, how certain actions functioned, how they interact (eg FOF granting access to Goring Blade instead of it being a DOT in a combo), and even added back an old button. And so people had to read their tooltips, to learn how the job now works. I would posit that the WHM ideas I posted, are quite comparable in scope to this: they are both reworks of a sort, after all. If such changes were added, you're saying you'd flat out refuse to read the tooltips to learn how it works? Would you try to play it as you previously were before the patch, out of protest? Because I hate to disappoint, but thanks to the potency system, it's possible to make the potencies add up such that doing so (playing as if the patch never occured) would be perfectly functional. You'd still be able to clear things, just as previously, perhaps even more effectively by making certain things more powerful.

For example, the suggested trait for Cure3 that you say you didn't read. 'When you have Medica2 active on yourself, the MP cost of Cure3 is halved'. So you would have more MP to work with in spam-healing scenarios. Is that, making Cure3 more accessible to use without fear of bottoming out on MP, 'throwing WHM into the shredder'? How about the bonus effect addition for Thin Air that you apparently skipped over, wherein the free spell is also instant cast (yes even Raise), is making WHM stronger at raising party members 'throwing it in the shredder'? Raising allies, hitting massive Cure3's, using Protect to reduce damage to allies, these are things that are as WHM as it gets IMO. Is giving WHM more gameplay like that of a WHM from older games, 'throwing WHM in the shredder'? I think we have very different perceptions of what a WHM is

I think that another thing that doesn't get considered, is that we're level 100 in our Jobs. We already went through the tutorial of levelling, so all these changes at once look scary to some. But a new player would have an even easier time adjusting, because they'd get given each part of the 'changes' over time, instead of all at once. And thanks to some of the changes literally being just 'hey what if we had a lower-level version of this action, so that new players get extra tools to play with while levelling, and they get to learn good habits that are useful at endgame (eg prioritizing using damage neutral healing via Lilies over MP spells) as they level so they build muscle memory', the levelling process would be more interesting to said player, which might go some way towards player retention for the role. Plus, it'd help make lower level roulettes for experienced players more interesting. For example, there's a 12 level gap (18-30) where you don't learn any new Job/Class actions, just Role Actions (Lucid and Swiftcast)! Very engaging for a new player, I'm sure. But with those lower level versions of existing actions, we'd be able to add stuff to break up that 12 level gap

You are kind of correct, in that yes, it could be added as a new job instead of as an update to an existing one. But that comes with additional issues, such as requiring more dev time for creating VFX, sounds, character animations, etc. When I first came up with those ideas, one of my main guiding principles was to keep devtime/implementation time requirements as low as possible, by minimizing the amount of extra buttons added, reusing existing VFX for things (eg the whole Water line already exists ingame as enemy attacks), etc. And besides all of that, if it were a new job, I think it's pretty obvious what would occur. People would see this cool new job, which would have more healing output than WHM, more mobility than WHM, more mitigation options than WHM, a more fun damage rotation than WHM for levelling/dungeon trash/whatever. It would be, by design, 'WHM but better' in every metric, and they'd ask the simple and painfully obvious question: 'Why wasn't this an update for WHM?'