jpgames.de Gamescom 2015 interview with Naoki Yoshida

[Krokov]

As for housing, when i see examples of housing systems in other games such as Wildstar's housing, i look at XIV's housing system and i think now that ARR is at 3.0 that a Housing 2.0 needs to happen.

WoW's Garrison & FFXI housing It's better than XIV.

[Daralii]

WoW's Garrison & FFXI housing It's better than XIV.

I... disagree on garrisons, to put it mildly.

[Mindylou]

WoW's Garrison & FFXI housing It's better than XIV.

Rift dimensions has them all beat 1000 fold.

[raelgun]

Rift dimensions has them all beat 1000 fold.

And how many players did RIFT have during its sub model again?
Just giving you a hint, it went free to play for a reason.

[Duelle]

I feel much the same way about his response to the loss of identity for WHM, he seems to thinK more powerful heals somehow fix the identity issue caused by homogonizing and nerfing many of the things specific to WHM. Removing their trait advantages on SS and Protect is a real kick in the nuts for WHM.

He did explain why they changed Stoneskin. Let's also remember that he wanted to get rid of Stoneskin when the game went from 1.0 to 2.0.

Protect is a problem if your plan is to have damage taken continue to scale. Considering you still need to level CNJ to get Protect, I'm not really seeing the problem here.

The interviewer was dumb to use a vague term like "identity". It leaves too many angles open.

[Kosmos992k]

Protect is a problem if your plan is to have damage taken continue to scale.

Considering that the damage being taken by players scales up also, a flat % mitigation caused by Protect, or a % of HP mitigation such as with StoneSkin hardly seems OP - even with Pro-shell and Granite Skin traits. Removing those traits substantially decreases the potency of those moves for WHM. Given that we are supposed to see WHM as a raw power healer (apparently), it would make more sense to me for he WHM ability with SS and Protect to be more powerful than when SCH or AST cross skill it. Instead though, WHM loses those exclusive traits.

[Ashkendor]

Considering that the damage being taken by players scales up also, a flat % mitigation caused by Protect, or a % of HP mitigation such as with StoneSkin hardly seems OP - even with Pro-shell and Granite Skin traits. Removing those traits substantially decreases the potency of those moves for WHM. Given that we are supposed to see WHM as a raw power healer (apparently), it would make more sense to me for he WHM ability with SS and Protect to be more powerful than when SCH or AST cross skill it. Instead though, WHM loses those exclusive traits.

Think about it - if the damage is scaled down so that you don't need the 18% mitigation from Graniteskin, then it ends up being overpowered as compared to the content. If the damage is scaled up to take into account the extra 8% mitigation provided by Graniteskin, suddenly WHM is absolutely indispensible. The same thing goes for the magic defense on Protect. With how much magic damage is being slung around in A1S (that's as far as I've gotten so far, can't personally attest to later floors), WHM would be absolutely necessary. They don't want it to end up that the meta is WHM + AST/SCH. The whole point of adding more classes was so that people have choices and the world has more variety. Right now AST needs some help so the meta is WHM + SCH but hopefully with some adjustments to AST that relaxes somewhat and people are more willing to experiment. They have to be careful though, so that the meta doesn't end up being AST + AST with the other two healers left out in the cold.

I don't envy them the task, honestly.

[Duelle]

Considering that the damage being taken by players scales up also, a flat % mitigation caused by Protect, or a % of HP mitigation such as with StoneSkin hardly seems OP - even with Pro-shell and Granite Skin traits. Removing those traits substantially decreases the potency of those moves for WHM. Given that we are supposed to see WHM as a raw power healer (apparently), it would make more sense to me for he WHM ability with SS and Protect to be more powerful than when SCH or AST cross skill it. Instead though, WHM loses those exclusive traits.

And in exchange you got more heals to throw around.

The reason you lost exclusive passive mitigation (Pro-Shell) is because with magic damage scaling the way it does and its prevalence in current content, you'd be shoehorning WHM into every raid comp because neither AST or SCH would be able to provide passive magic mitigation. The alternative would have been to remove Protect entirely, but you'd have even more people frothing at the mouth over that.

Right now AST needs some help so the meta is WHM + SCH but hopefully with some adjustments to AST that relaxes somewhat and people are more willing to experiment. They have to be careful though, so that the meta doesn't end up being AST + AST with the other two healers left out in the cold.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that they made AST's healing be sort of like WHM and SCH. Nocturnal and Diurnal stances shouldn't really exist because ideally the job should have it's own style of healing, not merely ape the existing healers. AST could have been a purely HoT-based healer or maybe a healer designed around smart heals.

[Blood-Aki]

Part of the problem stems from the fact that they made AST's healing be sort of like WHM and SCH. Nocturnal and Diurnal stances shouldn't really exist because ideally the job should have it's own style of healing, not merely ape the existing healers. AST could have been a purely HoT-based healer or maybe a healer designed around smart heals.

He stated we wanted healers to be equal what else can AST get, all new jobs have some form of "similar" abilites to each other, like MCH having MP regen abilites, just like BRD, etc. SO AST needs a regen ability and or a shield ability.

I mean, what else can they give it to make it look attractive? regen is very useful and so are damage shields. they just gave a much weaker version of both.

[Ashkendor]

Part of the problem stems from the fact that they made AST's healing be sort of like WHM and SCH. Nocturnal and Diurnal stances shouldn't really exist because ideally the job should have it's own style of healing, not merely ape the existing healers. AST could have been a purely HoT-based healer or maybe a healer designed around smart heals.

Yeah, I agree. I wish they'd gone with something new instead of this six of one half a dozen of the other bit.

The cards are kinda cool, but you don't get something that's of immediate use all that often.