Healer DPS

[Risvertasashi]

When did I say I have issues with "dethroned"?

In the comment I quoted.

SCH was released together with WHM, as 1.0 and 2.0 really can't be considered the same game.

Even if you want to split hairs about 1.0vs2.0, there was still a lot of double-white mage for 2.0 and a fair bit in 2.x.

A pet healer was also pretty hype at the time. I mean, it's easy for it to seem mundate after we've had it for 8 ish years but "pet healer" is not something you see all that commonly in MMOs.

SGE, however, was released seven years after AST and people were so desperate to feel something fresh in the healing department that they were willing to hype a job that plays the same but with lasers.

I'm also pretty curious to see if this hypothesis is true. If we do see a sharp falloff in endgame population of sages, my money would be on this reason being a significant factor.

Not to mention that 3.0 AST was terrible and SGE is not.

Very true, but AST proved to be niche even long term. As the 5.x series especially highlighted but we saw even before that, even when AST is the strongest healer it stays niche. To force people onto AST, it doesn't just need to be the strongest - balance needs to be exceptionally bad.

So I guess there's the implied question of: if AST didn't have launch issues, would it have been the most popular for a bit? Well, it did cause 'DPS in need' in the roulettes for a bit even so, but whether that would have survived to endgame - first ex trials, then raids - is a... very uncertain hypothesis.

AST just doesn't have mass appeal. Mass here being relative to 'among healers' which is a niche category already.

It was very obvious that SGE would end up being the most "popular" at the very start of an expansion, just like it was obvious Reaper and Summoner would end up being, respectively, the most played melee and caster. This is what I'm arguing.

Even with DPS it doesn't always happen. Machinist, for example. Now one might say "launch machinist was very difficult and only the best players could pull good numbers from it", but that doesn't negate the point, that just explains why it happened.

That said, yeah, I had a feeling new summoner would be ultra popular with how flashy it is. Reaper I'd have expected to be the most played melee but perhaps not by such a wide margin.

But back to the main point. I don't think it's that obvious that sage was going to make an ultra strong showing. If anything, usually scifi stuff tends to be a bit niche relative to traditional fantasy options so I wouldn't have guessed "healer but with lasers" would be that strong (in other settings it typically isn't); and even if it's "6 years of waiting for something new" at work, I wouldn't have expected it to lead to a sage population that's just as utterly massive as it currently is in the current, albeit limited, endgame. Surprises all around for me.

If anything, I'd have expected SCH to do this back at 2.0; there's a strong tendency for people to get super hyped about pet jobs.

Anyways, I look forward to seeing how much of the population stays or goes and eventually discussing what the longer term results may imply.