Dear SE, I am a Healer

[Enla]

SE didn't say "You'll get a new Healer for 5.0" or something like that...Its all IN YOUR MIND and your own expectations...

Since Gunbreaker was announced, every healer was thinking "Yeah, we'll get a new Healer" and if you say "I didn't think it" you are a liar.

But when SE show the Slide where you can read "Ranged-DPS" it was like a jar of cold water over you...it was TOTALLY UNEXPECTED.

Its normal to feel frustrated but the cause is just your own expectations.

Nice to see someone knows my own mind apparently better than I do. You should charge money for that great psychic gift you seem to have!

Frankly I expect nothing from SE and haven't since Stormblood dropped. I am however tired of the same tired excuses being trotted out when they had four years to implement those excuses after the first time they were given - and only managed to make things worse in the end. As I've said before I'd much, much rather they just say they'll never add another healer than have to go through this song and dance every two years - especially after the special kind of stupid that was the entire 4.0 patch cycle when it came to their attempts at healer 'balance'. I still have /very/ fond memories of my first run through Ala Mhigo on level and the 'fun' that was dealing with their nerfs to SCH that made it hard to play even in normal content. To say nothing of the travesty WHM mains have gone through. At least SCH got buffed and then over buffed over the course of the expansion. WHM is basically the red headed step child that if current interview speculation is correct, might very well continue to be so in 5.0 with their 'making WHM easier' comments.

It's pretty normal to be frustrated when the excuses given don't add up. Even when one is otherwise content with the new jobs being offered.

[Miste]

That's fine. I wasn't talking to you. I was specifically responding to the quoted individual because I had responded to him/her before after they had said the reasoning was never given. Besides the way you made your point in the first post (blog-like fashion) I have no issues with you being upset. In fact I was pretty surprised it wasn't tank/healer too. But no matter how they did it, not getting a healer after this long would have led to this backlash no matter what route they took. The whole Sam thing was a different expansion, different circumstances. I think it's pretty fair to say that they knew they were doing Doma, they knew that the playerbase favored Samurai, and it was an easy win to include them at that time. Maybe the better argument would be they could have made RDM somehow into a healer? But even then, probably not.

I know you weren't talking to me and that is fine, but these reasons are being flung around the topic often and I figured an explanation on why these reasons don't really fix the issues people have might help. Due to things the FFXIV team has done they come off as just weak excuses sadly.

Also I don't know what blog-like fashion is... I don't actually have a blog, nor do I normally type that much either forum post or otherwise. It just ended up that long so I could cover all the feedback I wanted to send to the FFXIV team so I don't know what you were originally trying to accuse me of even O.o and I still don't understand what the problem is with my post. I know it is long, but I had to cover everything I wanted to say /shrug

Making RDM a healer....eeehhh....I think that might have cheesed people off worse so maybe not that route.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

This is well thought out and well presented feedback to the devs...
The forum should have more feedback like this, it's sad that so many people are putting down this post.


I don't play healers a whole lot, but I do play them occasionally.
Going this long with no new healer is really disappointing...

6 years?!
That's as long as some games, or longer, take for their entire development...

[Nihility]

i'm personally feeling like...
they better be altering the current healers a ton if the reasoning they give for keeping choices so low is they can't balance them after all this time

right now scholar is the one that actually plays different and has a bunch of neat utility and damage reduction options and passive healing

While white mage is the big numbers healer and astro is white mage with cards replacing 5 or so ogc heals/utility skills

if they're going to keep the amount of healers so limited astro is going to need to start playing a lot more different than white mage

[Lauront]

As long as they never touch Holy, Tetragrammaton and Regen, i'm fine with everything being reworked since not only whm, but also SCH(selene) could need some serious work first instead of forever being useless.

It's not those spells which are the issue, really, so I doubt there's much to worry about.

Also, I think to be in a position to add a new healer, they're going to have to re-evaluate their encounter design and philosophy, because at the moment that's the biggest limiting factor on adding new types of healer and any meaningful differentiation. I'm looking forward to the May PLL to see what it is they're doing, exactly.

[AxlStream]

What would a new healer even do that our current 3 doesn't? What would be it's catch to mechanically and thematically differenciate it?

[BroodingFicus]

i'm personally feeling like...
they better be altering the current healers a ton if the reasoning they give for keeping choices so low is they can't balance them after all this time

right now scholar is the one that actually plays different and has a bunch of neat utility and damage reduction options and passive healing

While white mage is the big numbers healer and astro is white mage with cards replacing 5 or so ogc heals/utility skills

if they're going to keep the amount of healers so limited astro is going to need to start playing a lot more different than white mage

Exactly. Really the healer roll suffers from a similar issue to what they said tanks have: you've got an odd number of healers and only two slots to fill. Once upon a time, SCH and WHM had great synergy and it was almost always best to have one of each. Then they added a class that was essentially a SCH with cards and a WHM with cards as far as healing ability went. It pushed WHM out because WHM /only/ has healing, with no utility to offer so if you have a choice between a WHM with cards and a WHM without, the choice becomes simple. Balancing with three healers is going to be seriously difficult. Since everyone has to be able to heal the content and overhealing does nothing, WHM is never going to beat out the others. You can't simply nerf the other twos healing so much that they can't handle encounters without a WHM or you'll just see SCH pushed out for AST and WHM. The root of it? AST. They need to be stripped down and rebuilt so they aren't a carbon copy of the other two and then work from there trying to balance. I don't think its obtainable to find harmony with AST stepping on peoples toes.

That worries me however since we didn't get a new healer. At this point are they planning to massively rework AST? What is this nonsense about making WHM 'easier'? Easier how? We have no real mechanics or rotations, our dps is the most simplistic of any healer, little need for MP management etc. It makes me worried that they're once again focusing on the wrong issue. WHM was WHM from the start. Problems arose when they made AST a WHM as well. So get AST off our turf or give us our own unique identity. However Yoshi has said time and time again he doesn't want to give us utility and our identity is as the 'pure healer'. Which will never work. Simply put I just don't have faith in them to get this right seeing as they haven't listened for the last 4 years and it does make me question how long Ill be willing to play if it becomes clear WHM is going to be odd man out again for another few years.

[Seraphor]

What would a new healer even do that our current 3 doesn't? What would be it's catch to mechanically and thematically differenciate it?

The problem is we have a paradigm of pure healer, shield healer, and one that can do both.
The healing modes need to be mixed up to fit another one in there that isnt just another Astrologian.

They could do this by focusing on two different healing methods and two mitigation methods.

HoTs and pre-heals. (different takes on delayed healing)
Shields and damage resistance. (different mitigation)

Then you can have:
HoT/resistance (WHM)
HoT/shields (AST)
Pre-heal/shields (SCH)
Pre-heal/resistance (new healer)

This way, no matter what combo you have, you're not completely stepping on each others toes.

[AxlStream]

Interesting. What do you mean by pre heal though? I don't think I am familiar with that type of ability.

[Seraphor]

Interesting. What do you mean by pre heal though? I don't think I am familiar with that type of ability.

Like SCH emergency tactics, or to some extent, Earthly Star. And with a nit of tweaking, you could turn one of the faeries into a pre-heal method.