White Mage Overflow

[TonberiScholar]

It's actually somewhat baffling that people will claim SCH and AST were never OP before, just because it's undertuned right now. The reason why these changes hit AST and SCH in the first place is because they were so incredibly strong, and the reason why WHM was left alone was because it had nothing OP to rework. If that's not telling you something then I don't know what to say.

AST needs some buffs and maybe SCH as well, but please don't claim these jobs were never OP and that WHM was always a fine job when it was struggling with any kind of identity or raid spot for 4 years.

Or, after having the same problem with White Mage for one and a half expansions (late Heavensward and most of Stormblood), they could've just brought the outlier up instead of sticking to a concept ("pure healer with no shields or utility") that they themselves ended up abandoning in the next expansion.

White Mage was underpowered towards the end of Heavensward and for most of Stormblood for the things players actually cared about, and the devs should've just normalized based on that for Shadowbringers instead of "balancing" around a healing paradigm that hasn't existed since ARR, if even then.

Adding stuff to WHM to make it more competitive wouldn't have changed its core gameplay loop, because the things it was missing were things that were separate from its kit in the first place. Being the high-personal-DPS Healer that it is now would still work even if it got the instants and revamped Lily system it has now.

Instead two unique styles of Healer play (pet micro and RNG buff decisions) got butchered because they decided WHM was the only "acceptable" Healer style.

And then they turn around and end up giving WHMs the stuff that people liked SCH and AST for, but only after ruining the two other Healers in the process.

Yet most of the WHMs here are just more concerned about "SCH/AST were OP" and how it's "their time to shine".

For a Job with so many vehement defenders of "healers shouldn't have to DPS", y'all are pretty good at doing damage to all the Healers.

In "pure healing", SCH's stronger than it has ever been, to the point where every element of mechanical identity it's had since ARR except shielding is gone. If all SCH players cared about was "being OP", you'd think there wouldn't be as many complaints as there are now. And with the cost cut to Art of War, it's quicker AoE Potency for a lower proportional cost, yet I (and seemingly others) would still prefer the old DoTs->Bane-> Shadowflare loop.

Both SCH and AST got hack-job nerfs applied to them to the point where they've even got leftovers that entirely don't fit (SCH's entire pet bar, every bit of Lore around Astrologian) that they didn't even bother removing or changing. In the expansion of "Healer balancing", no less.

There's way more to what makes a job enjoyable/distinct than just its pure DPS or healing throughput numbers (or it being "OP"), but so long as they're cramming every Healer into a WHM-lite mold, all that stuff's going to be thrown by the wayside to try and balance things with just Potency adjustments and cost adjustments.

And that's doomed to fail.

If the Tank roles or DPS roles were treated like this, you wouldn't see people coming into every thread discussing the thing and talking about how "it's okay they lost their identity, because x class I liked was underpowered based on what players want but not against the content" as they try to drown out the dissatisfied people or temporize the problems they bring up.

Yet it's somehow "okay" for Healers, so long as all the Healers end up looking like White Mage.