The Healer Double Standard

[braxberry]

Heh, I think the biggest burn regarding the AST only had three buttons (though, four if you count aero!) before/all three healers only have three now is that idea of "if a job is performing higher than the others, they like to bring up the lower performance jobs instead of nerfing the high performance one." In this case, it's exactly contradictory to that mindset.

[loreleidiangelo]

Tbh, Yoshi's general statement ("we'd like healers to heal more and dps less") doesn't bother me in a vacuum, what frustrates me is the man's complete unwillingness to do the systems overhaul necessary to make it a reality despite constant feedback from high-end players stating it as a necessity (encounter redesign, slash healing potencies, tone down or remove insane oGCD mana-free abilities, diversify healing kits so they're not all good at everything healing-wise etc). Literally every top end player knows what the devs have to do to "make us" heal more, so to see these obviously bungled attempts via brute-force nerfing/pruning our damage rotations only serves to aggravate all of us, even those like me who don't enjoy playing "green DPS".

[Shalan]

Funny that people are raving now that SCH is getting this when AST has had it literally the entire time. 1 DPS button, 1 DoT button, and one AoE. Were you crying at the beginning of HW because of that too, or only now because it affects your main job?

Also you're literally not arguing against anything I said. I said tanks benefit from the aggro generated from DPS, hence why it makes sense for them to still have it.

Heyo, AST main here.
I wouldn't wish my braindead DPS rotation on anyone, it's boring as hell and the only reason we weren't throwing fits back from HW was because the Card system we had to offset the boredom (which is now being gutted in terms of complexity). Leveling any healer 1-70 is going to be one of the most boring experiences this game has to offer now.

Can't wait for that those thrilling instanced story battles 211111111111 21111111111 21111111111 Oh how thrilling. Can't even escape the tedium by playing another healer for those story missions now because we're all the same.

[Misutoraru]

if I have the choice of spamming heal in dungeon to keep everyone alive or having tons of free time to dps. I pick the former, but those days are gone.
FFXIV have evolved to a point everything is about dps and occasionally drop a few heal where even a RDM can take over the job

[Haxaan]

On the topic of DPS for healers, the only healer who is getting a DPS nerf is SCH. AST has had 3 dps options since inception. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why SCH are mad about the skill pruning but WHM and AST have pretty much had a Brain Dead DPS rotation since the beginning. My biggest gripe with the Healer changes is that instead of fixing WHM to make it hold it's own against SCH and AST in the utility arena, they dumbed down the other two to be on level footing with WHM which strips down a lot of the uniqueness of the other two jobs. At this point we have 1 healer with 3 different flavors of animation which I am not ok with. They have all but deleted any semblance of Time Mage that AST had, and turned SCH into a WHM with a Pet. I can kind of understand what they did to the card system, even if I don't agree with it, but making both fairies the same exact thing but different skins is kind of silly. If Selene was useless then change her and make her interesting. I dunno, I'm still interested enough to give them all a play through, but I am very disappointed in what I've seen so far. The only positive thing I've seen so far is that the animations are pretty.

[Deceptus]

They have all but deleted any semblance of Time Mage that AST had, and turned SCH into a WHM with a Pet. .

Just prepping everyone for the new healer: Time Mage! /s

[Atlantasia]

The most interesting DPS rotation WHM had was back in HW to be honest (not talking grouped up mobs in dungeons with Holy). When you had Aero III, Aero II, Stone III, Assize and Fluid Aura. That rotation wasn't the best in the world, but it did give you something to do and damage to weave in. Then SB removed the damage on Fluid Aura, making it worthless to the rotation... and then in ShB we lose Aero III and the Black Lily skill is neutral at best because the GCD heals required to access it aren't exactly great unless you're on the move in a fight and need to heal. Which is already achieved with SC Medica II... so yes, WHM's DPS did get nerfed too, it didn't get nerfed as bad as SCH, but it's still meh. I hate DPSing on AST currently, always have and I frankly do not want my main, my WHM to be like that too. :/

Back in ARR by the way, healers did not DPS nearly as much as now, the fights were pretty engaging, and there was downtime to be had, however use of DPS skills depleted MP and the abilities to gain back MP were not there to the extent they are now, so even with spamming MP potions and stacking Piety which was a thing back then, the MP pools were not enough to allow steady constant DPSing on healers. WHM might have gotten a few Aero IIs on things and ScH got their DoT's off and maybe some ruins, at the time they had more MP management than WHM though. DPSing heavily was not expected though because of the constraint to MP.

[Semirhage]

With regards to "what are you complaining about, your rotation has always been boring!": Yes. It has. I have tolerated it being boring because I foolishly listened when I was told that the fun was "coming". That I'd get something good "eventually". I don't believe that anymore. I'm not switching mains because my job is changing for the worse, I'm switching because my patience has run out waiting for something good.

[Deceptus]

The most interesting DPS rotation WHM had was back in HW to be honest (not talking grouped up mobs in dungeons with Holy). When you had Aero III, Aero II, Stone III, Assize and Fluid Aura. That rotation wasn't the best in the world, but it did give you something to do and damage to weave in. Then SB removed the damage on Fluid Aura, making it worthless to the rotation... and then in ShB we lose Aero III and the Black Lily skill is neutral at best because the GCD heals required to access it aren't exactly great unless you're on the move in a fight and need to heal. Which is already achieved with SC Medica II... so yes, WHM's DPS did get nerfed too, it didn't get nerfed as bad as SCH, but it's still meh. I hate DPSing on AST currently, always have and I frankly do not want my main, my WHM to be like that too. :/

Back in ARR by the way, healers did not DPS nearly as much as now, the fights were pretty engaging, and there was downtime to be had, however use of DPS skills depleted MP and the abilities to gain back MP were not there to the extent they are now, so even with spamming MP potions and stacking Piety which was a thing back then, the MP pools were not enough to allow steady constant DPSing on healers. WHM might have gotten a few Aero IIs on things and ScH got their DoT's off and maybe some ruins, at the time they had more MP management than WHM though. DPSing heavily was not expected though because of the constraint to MP.

In ARR SCH had Aero as a cross class and blizz 2 as well if they wanted some extra aoe.

But just like WHM, SE decided that skillful and optimal play shouldn't be rewarded.

[Gemina]

Funny that people are raving now that SCH is getting this when AST has had it literally the entire time. 1 DPS button, 1 DoT button, and one AoE. Were you crying at the beginning of HW because of that too, or only now because it affects your main job?

I wouldn't necessarily say "raving now". I would say raving again. They gutted SCH at the start of SB as well. They lost access to Blizzard 2, Miasma 2, Shadow Flare was changed from a spell on the GCD to an ability with a moderate CD, and Bane was given drop off damage based on number of targets. SCH's moaned and groaned then because SCH didn't even feel like SCH anymore. They eventually gave back Miasma II because SCH literally had no spammable AoE. Now it's even worse. Shadow Flare, Bane, Energy Drain, Miasma and Miasma II are now gone completely. It's things like this that have people arrive at the conclusion that the devs don't listen to their playerbase.

AST has always had the most boring offensive kit of the three healers, and this has been expressed loudly over the course of their time in Eorzea. Their kit was never a solution when it's always been a problem, but at least AST was able to keep themselves busy with a sophisticated card gimmick, which is now also pretty much gone.

Despite all of this, it's not even the biggest issue that is going on with healers. The biggest issue that is going on with healers is the devs themselves are either completely oblivious to them, or don't care. We all know this because they keep trying to fix what isn't even broken while ignoring the true issues healers are having. Someone over there is defending schite like Repose and Fluid Aura, while schite like the new card system and stripping healer jobs of their class roots is getting green-lighted.

Nobody likes their vision of 'pure healer'. We all knew that DPSing 90% of the encounter couldn't continue, but we don't want to heal for 90% of the encounter either. Most of us just want a nice mix of DPS and healing during combat that doesn't have us smashing the same button over and over again.