Please Make Healing + DPSing More Engaging

[Verlyn]

We did the dance just fine back when we had more dps buttons to push. This isn't our first rondo :P.
Even then, dps rotations for other roles (except tanks) actually got more complicated in a lot of ways. They gotta do the dance too.

[Verlyn]

All these tools were apparently removed/reworked in the name of balance. Unfortunately, the "balance" they strive for so hard by simplifying everything only applies to less than eight fights out of god knows how much content is in this game. As long as all the healers can do the content without struggling too hard, then who cares what people bring. Let them min-max their comps. Let jobs be meta for those eight-ish fights on a patch-by-patch basis (they already are anyway).

I really don't understand this design push for "everything must be close to perfect parity on 2% of the content."

[HyperiusUltima]

All these tools were apparently removed/reworked in the name of balance. Unfortunately, the "balance" they strive for so hard by simplifying everything only applies to less than eight fights out of god knows how much content is in this game. As long as all the healers can do the content without struggling too hard, then who cares what people bring. Let them min-max their comps. Let jobs be meta for those eight-ish fights on a patch-by-patch basis (they already are anyway).

I really don't understand this design push for "everything must be close to perfect parity on 2% of the content."

Savage was made to be difficult content, just like everything before Shadowbringers. The thing is however is that Savage is considered High-end because it asks you to play the job you main to the best of your ability. If you really want a job to be rampant the whole expansion(SB BRD) then you don't touch it. All the playerbase wants is a semblance of balance that's close enough to where people aren't going to whine about it since ever since they changed Healers, people have complained about AST and SCH in particular due to the consolidation for the sake of healer balance.

[Verlyn]

Savage was made to be difficult content, just like everything before Shadowbringers. The thing is however is that Savage is considered High-end because it asks you to play the job you main to the best of your ability. If you really want a job to be rampant the whole expansion(SB BRD) then you don't touch it. All the playerbase wants is a semblance of balance that's close enough to where people aren't going to whine about it since ever since they changed Healers, people have complained about AST and SCH in particular due to the consolidation for the sake of healer balance.

Unfortunately, even homogenizing all of our tools did not bring this coveted balance. Behold, people complaining about double WHM on a single fight.
But one job being better than the others on a fight-by-fight does not mean the others are bad or even that they cannot do those fights. There is a false notion going on that somehow if every healer were in perfect parity, a meta would not form and everything outside of that meta cannot function. I promise you, that is not the case. People will hang onto 1-5% of a numbers difference as somehow The Entire Reason They Are Failing A Fight when the actual reason is probably execution.

This is not a call to throw balance completely out the window ala FFXI. But I'm saying Savage fights do not matter enough, in the grand scheme of this entire game, to rework entire jobs solely around performance in them. We're at a point right now that Savage raid bosses are dictating the design of jobs and roles. I feel that's the wrong way to go about things.

Bring the numbers as close as you can to encourage people to bring the player and not the class, sure. But don't tip the scale so far in that direction that you forget that more than Titania EX, Innocence EX, Eden 1-4 and S and upcoming Ultimate are supposed to engage players.

[Lodi]

Unfortunately, even homogenizing all of our tools did not bring this coveted balance. Behold, people complaining about double WHM on a single fight.
But one job being better than the others on a fight-by-fight does not mean the others are bad or even that they cannot do those fights. There is a false notion going on that somehow if every healer were in perfect parity, a meta would not form and everything outside of that meta cannot function. I promise you, that is not the case. People will hang onto 1-5% of a numbers difference as somehow The Entire Reason They Are Failing A Fight when the actual reason is probably execution.

This is not a call to throw balance completely out the window ala FFXI. But I'm saying Savage fights do not matter enough, in the grand scheme of this entire game, to rework entire jobs solely around performance in them. We're at a point right now that Savage raid bosses are dictating the design of jobs and roles. I feel that's the wrong way to go about things.

Bring the numbers as close as you can to encourage people to bring the player and not the class, sure. But don't tip the scale so far in that direction that you forget that more than Titania EX, Innocence EX, Eden 1-4 and S and upcoming Ultimate are supposed to engage players.

Not to mention that the entire leveling and tomestone system revolves around replaying old content over and over. I'm sure plenty of people got their last level (or the last tomestones they needed) in Sastasha.

And below level 80, balance... doesn't really exist. There's been so many changes that depending on the level, some classes are ridiculously overpowered compared to the others.

[Sloprano]

Not to mention that the entire leveling and tomestone system revolves around replaying old content over and over. I'm sure plenty of people got their last level (or the last tomestones they needed) in Sastasha.

And below level 80, balance... doesn't really exist. There's been so many changes that depending on the level, some classes are ridiculously overpowered compared to the others.

Believe a solid class foundation available from level 16 and defining core gameplay unlocked as you get your job stone would help this. Then add a slow trickle of new skills and traits that further builds on this as you level. Where doing Sastasha at level 16 feels good, and being max level feels great.

That's where my fascination with old Arcanist/Scholar combo came from: It aready did the foundation and core gameplay from an early level. Arcanist brought base gameplay with dots, debuffs, Aetherflow and Scholar built on this with pet and shields (and Conjurer for some more). So as Scholar in Satasha you'd at least have Ruin, Bio, Miasma, 1 Aetherflow + ED, Virus and you could have Cleric Stance, Aero and Protect. For heals you got your physick, Embrace and WD. Then at level 30, where you get the cornerstone ability Adlo, you also get Bane. Now they're doing another bout of making older content enticing with Moogle tomes which just reminds me of how little I can do there.

Keeping on posting hopefully make SE come out and let us in on the thought process about non-<current expansion> content with this skill readjustment or let us know that one nuke/one dot is exactly what they wanted.

[Almostward]

It's sad to see healers be over simplified just so more people can play it despite engagement being down while doing so. Old Astro was fun and had a lot going on, and Scholar...I can feel all its lost.

[Rasikko]

I wish they did something to make simply being a healer more desirable..

[Sloprano]

I wish they did something to make simply being a healer more desirable..

In a weird sense, I think that is what they were hoping to achieve with the 5.0 changes: To make more people pick up the role to make up for the lack of a new healer job in four years by making the existing ones more desirable. From reading here only thing they achieved was making SCH and AST have the same problems WHM have been dealing with for years: Stuck with 1 nuke/1 dot and very few other options when no healing is required.

Maybe it was to streamline everything to be balanced around the <1% of content or bring new players in, but I thought they dropped that latter way of thinking when they introduced Dark Knight to help tank queues and only saw people who already played WAR/PLD picked up DRK.

[Rasikko]

In a weird sense, I think that is what they were hoping to achieve with the 5.0 changes: To make more people pick up the role to make up for the lack of a new healer job in four years by making the existing ones more desirable. From reading here only thing they achieved was making SCH and AST have the same problems WHM have been dealing with for years: Stuck with 1 nuke/1 dot and very few other options when no healing is required.

Maybe it was to streamline everything to be balanced around the <1% of content or bring new players in, but I thought they dropped that latter way of thinking when they introduced Dark Knight to help tank queues and only saw people who already played WAR/PLD picked up DRK.

Don't forget that one of those DoTs was a pretty potent AOE (and could be stacked up with Aero I-II before the merge). I don't care how strong Dia is, I miss Aero III.

I feel pigeonholed into role because nobody I know wants to be a healer/get on their healer. That is a telling sign, because during Stormblood, it seemed like I had to fight for healer spots.