6 Years without a healer?

[Yuyuka3]

This is a discussion forum, and everyone has a right to express how they feel about the situation. If it is grating your ears/eyeballs then turn away. This is a big issue, and we're not just going to sit idly by and ignore it.

Balance is their excuse, but it is not the true reason why we are not getting a 4th healer. We are not getting a 4th healer at least at the launch of 5.0 for a myriad of reasons. One of them is AST. The addition of this job in 3.0 really screwed things up. It showcased that they could not find a way to make a 3rd healer truly unique giving it the base skills of WHM and tossing in a card mechanic. It is now over-tuned and because it has nearly the entire base toolkit of WHM, leaving WHM out in the cold.

Role skills is another. An extremely flawed design due to an antiquated and stubborn FFXI/FFXIV 1.0 mentality of thinking such a system works in this mmo. No role has suffered from this atrocious design more than healers.

PvE content design is a third reason that has also backed them into a corner which does not allow healer A to have distinctive advantages/disadvantages in comparison to Healer B and Healer C. Since all three healers can easily meet the healing requirements, the only way to accomplish this is to diversify their DPS kits and they did a poor job with this as well; once again leaving WHM out in the cold.

Another reason: BLU. The devs made the decision to allocate time and resources into its implementation which could have been spent fixing this healer cobweb we're entangled in. This then leads to reason five: neglect. I don't know if they see the healer community as the least desirable role to play based off some BS chart or other form of figures and numbers but a decision was made to leave the healer status quo as is. See reason number three. What really sucks is that the limited job concept failed. BLU was clearly the wrong choice, and while there are some players who are fine with it, there are far more who wanted this job to be viable for duties in very much the same way the healer community wanted a 4th healer.

We already KNOW that healers are unbalanced. This isn't news to anybody. The problem are the reasons why they are unbalanced. The circumstances that have lead to the state the healer community is currently in. The dev team still has my support because I sympathize with the amount of pressure that is on them to bring satisfactory content to so many different playstyles, but things like this break down those supportive pillars due to feelings of being underappreciated.

I can't even begin to comprehend how you think not having a new healer is the best outcome of this situation when it is the outcome of an extremely bad circumventive situations the devs have put themselves in.

It's not that I disagree with you. Actually, quite the contrary. I agree on almost every point. However, the reason why I think that not getting another healer yet is the best possible solution is because I don't want them to allocate resources into figuring out what new healer to make that will only be another copy-paste job in the end. I want to actually, deeply think about the existing healers, evaluate what's wrong with the current situation, come up with a solution, and then implement said solution.

Unfortunately, my hope for this has since been crushed by the "make WHM more easy"-garbage comment that's floating around now, and that, believe it or not, was presented to me as something good when I first shown it yesterday. "At least they are doing something about it! Just wait and see!"
Yeah, thank you, I waited and saw pre-4.0 already, and see where it took us. I'm not gonna wait and see anymore. That comment is on the same level of bad as the "pure healer"-bullshit from pre-4.0...
Ah well. I digressed.

[Teraluna]

I’m not buying this class balance as a reason for no new healer. Other classes don’t have perfect balance and it didn’t stop new dps/tank being added.
At the moment it’s not even three separate healers, more like two and a half as AST copy pasted WHM skills.
Come on SE get working on a battle cleric!

[Lambdafish]

The alternative is 6 years without a physical ranged DPS, and considering that we only had 2 physical ranged DPS as opposed to 3 healers, this makes sense.

Next expansion will most likely be healer and caster DPS given the numbers

[Deceptus]

The alternative is 6 years without a ranged DPS, and considering that we only had 2 ranged DPS as opposed to 3 healers, this makes sense.

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

[Dualgunner]

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

The role action separates casters and rangers, and Yoshi P himself separates casters and rangers.

[Lambdafish]

There are 6 current ranged DPS jobs. BLM/SMN/RDM/BRD/MCH/BLU

5 if you don't count BLU but will be 6 again once DNC drops.

I made the distinction between ranged and caster in my post, and you should know that there is a massive difference between the two types of DPS if you play the game. Regardless, I edited my comment for clarification

[DamianFatale]

AST is not a copy of WHM or Scholar. I admit that we share similar skills of the two, but you guys don't have the card buffs, or time extensions on regens. We do unique things.

[Lambdafish]

AST is not a copy of WHM or Scholar. I admit that we share similar skills of the two, but you guys don't have the card buffs, or time extensions on regens. We do unique things.

My biggest problem with AST is the sects. Those stances to me just read "SCH mode" and "WHM mode" which a big problem for class identity. If they removed those and reworked AST into something that deviated from SCH and WHM I think it would be a lot better received in its own right.

[Misutoraru]

That’s the exact issue I have,
I always have a main in each role, AST being my main healer since HW, after level it to 70 and gearing it I start leveling SCH and WHM. I lose my initiative to level up both, they just feel the same as AST without the rng card system. The core are the same.
I was expecting a new heal role in new expansion and I always feel dancer feel to buff/debug role more than heal
I don’t want another carbon copy of existing healer with identity issue. It is not heal exclusive, back in HW release, MCH feel very similar to BRD too.

[Sebazy]

AST is not a copy of WHM or Scholar. I admit that we share similar skills of the two, but you guys don't have the card buffs, or time extensions on regens. We do unique things.

I'm not really sure how you can make a statement of this?

The core kit is absolutely a cut and paste of WHM, doubly so in Diu sect. It's GCD healing setup functions identically to WHM and until the introduction of Earthly Star, you would typically heal in almost exactly the same manner as well.