Is it fun?

[ZedxKayn]

It's fun on the first day of a new patch.

[Hazama999]

Let's get the DPSing part out of the way... HELL NO LMAO. Throwing the same 3 or so spells is boring as all get out. I mean, you still do it, of course, but it isn't engaging in the least.

The healing itself walks a fine line between fun and frustration. There are instances in which everything is going well, too well, perhaps, and the level of engagement is kinda low, but as someone else pointed out earlier, it's when the struggle starts that you have to stay on your toes.

When you heal, you deal with the additional mechanic that is... well, people... lol. There are instances in which everything is so chaotic and stressful even, but these can be fun. Depends on your predisposition to those instances, I think. Some like the tiny adrenaline spike that comes with an unexpected death or mechanic screw-up, some don't. Some do in some instances and don't in others...

[Kacho_Nacho]

Let's get the DPSing part out of the way... HELL NO LMAO. Throwing the same 3 or so spells is boring as all get out. I mean, you still do it, of course, but it isn't engaging in the least.

The healing itself walks a fine line between fun and frustration. There are instances in which everything is going well, too well, perhaps, and the level of engagement is kinda low, but as someone else pointed out earlier, it's when the struggle starts that you have to stay on your toes.

When you heal, you deal with the additional mechanic that is... well, people... lol. There are instances in which everything is so chaotic and stressful even, but these can be fun. Depends on your predisposition to those instances, I think. Some like the tiny adrenaline spike that comes with an unexpected death or mechanic screw-up, some don't. Some do in some instances and don't in others...

Healing is odd in a way. It's at its best when things are going wrong and hardly noticeable when things are going well.

I daresay healers get more commendations when they mess up than when they heal perfectly. It's the Healer's Burden and it happens in every MMORPG.

At least our friends know how much a healer contributes to the party's success. A smooth run equals a good healer.

[Reksanden]

It can be hit and miss, but also depends on your preference in which class. All of them are viable, of course, but I enjoy AST the most.

Some months ago, I solo healed an e9 as a Noct AST after the other healer DC'd in the first minute of the fight. We didn't wipe, and it was stressful as all heck... But it was fun!

But I've also had many runs where it's smooth as butter through the run, and... Just wasn't as fun at the time? I'd watch one of the DPS and would wish that I'd gone in on BLM or something instead.

[GrimGale]

The better you become at healing, the better you are at pacing your CDs and make efficient use of your healing abilities.
The more gear you have the stronger those abilities become.

That means that through gained proficiency and gear rewards you will have to heal less and less, and your healing downtime will become more and more prevalent.

That means you find yourself spamming your offensive spells over and over, unless you want to stand there and do nothing for long periods of time.

Your reward for getting better at healing is 1 button boredom.

[AC9Breaker]

It depends on the encounter for me. I enjoy healing, more so as AST then WHM or SCH. Although I do get a lot of satisfaction when I time my shields/critlo for tankbusters and raid wides just right.

[lbr]

I think AST is reasonably satisfying to play. The cards are uninteresting, but I enjoy being able to weave something every GCD, and the cards still require some attention even when there's no healing to be done. It plays smoothly and the kit feels holistically designed, if bland, which is not something that can be said for the other two healers. Not having to worry about double weaving also helps because it allows the first half of the GCD to be spent on planning and triaging. Not to mention having the best movement tools out of the three. Sure, the flavour isn't there, but the kit fits together.

The other two are rather miserable though, with no real good movement or weaving options as well as clunky resource mechanics. WHM is the least fun for me, while I can't enjoy the optimal way to play SCH but at least ruin 2 exists and art of war is satisfying in dungeon pulls.

[Derio]

For me WHM is the most fun, only due to 5 things. Presence of Mind, Thin Air, Benediction, The Lilies, and Holy spam.

The other healers feel like I am hitting with a wet noodle, especially in solo content. SCH was a big favorite of mine simply due to it having skills from SMN which made it fun and active. Since it was gutted, I have put it down. AST is good but not as fun as WHM.

In normal and casual content there is not enough outgoing damage to make you feel like a healer, and at the same time there is far too much downtime to where you spamming 1 button makes it boring.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

I think AST is reasonably satisfying to play. The cards are uninteresting, but I enjoy being able to weave something every GCD, and the cards still require some attention even when there's no healing to be done. It plays smoothly and the kit feels holistically designed, if bland, which is not something that can be said for the other two healers. Not having to worry about double weaving also helps because it allows the first half of the GCD to be spent on planning and triaging. Not to mention having the best movement tools out of the three. Sure, the flavour isn't there, but the kit fits together.

The other two are rather miserable though, with no real good movement or weaving options as well as clunky resource mechanics. WHM is the least fun for me, while I can't enjoy the optimal way to play SCH but at least ruin 2 exists and art of war is satisfying in dungeon pulls.

I genuinely feel people don't pay enough attention to how absolutely garbage the new card system is. If there was an ever an example to give of Shadowbringers cutting class design features and fun for the sake of reaching nebulous balance at too great a cost, this would be it. There is absolutely ZERO feedback for Astrologian using the cards. The impact each individual card brings is so miniscule you can't even feel it without analysing the log (which is, you know, logging is against TOS and all that). And even when you do look at your logs, turns out that even all cards combined will at most amount to the impact of trick attack. The new limp 5% trick attack. Applying individual cards? You feel nothing. Before, yes, cards were random, but when you got that 45s AOE Balance going you could visibly see the boss losing an extra % of health compared to when you don't, and that was satisfying. Balancing the game into a perfect flatline when you throw the baby out with the water and make abilities unfun is bad design. The new cards are busywork for the sake of busywork and nothing else. This is a shining example of how balancing choices in 5.0 cut too much substance that was deemed troublesome and then replaced it with nothing.

[lbr]

I genuinely feel people don't pay enough attention to how absolutely garbage the new card system is. If there was an ever an example to give of Shadowbringers cutting class design features and fun for the sake of reaching nebulous balance at too great a cost, this would be it. There is absolutely ZERO feedback for Astrologian using the cards. The impact each individual card brings is so miniscule you can't even feel it without analysing the log (which is, you know, logging is against TOS and all that). And even when you do look at your logs, turns out that even all cards combined will at most amount to the impact of trick attack. The new limp 5% trick attack. Applying individual cards? You feel nothing. Before, yes, cards were random, but when you got that 45s AOE Balance going you could visibly see the boss losing an extra % of health compared to when you don't, and that was satisfying. Balancing the game into a perfect flatline when you throw the baby out with the water and make abilities unfun is bad design. The new cards are busywork for the sake of busywork and nothing else. This is a shining example of how balancing choices in 5.0 cut too much substance that was deemed troublesome and then replaced it with nothing.

I definitely agree. While I still think AST is the best of all three in terms of how it plays, the buffs are tiny and uninteresting. I'm afraid I cannot comment on how they were before ShB as I did not play AST before then, but from what I have read I sure do think the options were much more interesting. If they were so afraid of people fishing for balance all the time, they should've just removed the damage buff from it and put it on something similar to the current divination where it's something you get as a payoff after playing a few cards.

I may be a new player but reading about how the jobs used to work back in the day make me sad sometimes because I never got to experience them, especially with SCH.