A summary of healer issues

[Aravell]

For example, unifying the buffs does not favor the lowest denominator, since it favors groups that coordinate their buffs since them being ABLE to be aligned means doing so generates a huge boost in performance over those who do not. That very much does not favor "the lowest denominator".

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

[ForsakenRoe]

This part isn't true at all. Groups that were capable of aligning buffs were already aligning it, with or without the change, they gain no net benefit from this change at all. Unifying timers just forces the regular players to align naturally by simply pressing on cooldown.

Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

[Absurdity]

Yep, and by making them all 2min, the potential choice of 'ok blow 90's and 2mins here, hold 3's we won't have another use of them so keep them till the pot window' is gone. In it's place, we have two options, everyone holds, or everyone blows em on CD. And the best part is, people still can't keep stuff aligned, because fight design gets in the way. Even with 30y range, the final fight has people spread so far apart for one of the 2min windows you can't hit everyone, which means a SCH or NIN can put their debuff on the boss just fine, but the DRG and BRD can't get their stuff out till a couple seconds later when the mechanic is out of the way.

So ofc, the SE solution is likely going to be 'Brotherhood range increased to 50y'

This. Good groups were already aligning their raid buffs, so all these changes did, at least in theory, was take most of the planning out of it by simply making all buffs have the same cooldown.


The same goes for the melee changes. Yes melees still deal more damage than ranged dps but a big part of the difficulty when playing melee came from keeping uptime with the relatively limited melee range while dealing with mechanics.
The changes to boss hitboxes eliminated that aspect of playing a melee dps entirely, so who was this change made for? Clearly not the people at the skill ceiling that were already capable of keeping uptime as much as possible.

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

[tearagion]

The fact that melee dps still perform significantly better than ranged dps however is a case of them digging their heels in for no justifiable reason.

The justifiable reason is that range is still an advantage, even with huge EW hitboxes. Melee is the most populous dps role, with the most individual jobs. If physranged were equal to melee in damage there would be no reason not to run 2 of them in every fight. So melee dps being ahead of anything with range and mobility is healthier for pf and (theoretically) for job playrate distribution. Are there other solutions? Obviously, but the difference isn't completely nonsensical.