Macrocosmos completely invalidating the P3S heal check is stupid

[elioaiko]

And then what? The Devs continue to ignore WHM and the Sylphies go "hey, WHM is ok in p3s now!" and it continues being the most popular class on all fights, solidifying its position as being "fine".

Exactly, nerfing Macro will only prove that some people don't care about healer balance but to want everything else to be on WHM's level when that level is rock bottom and barebones.

It being popular is so sad be a use it's what the devs use to see if it's in trouble. ShB 5.0 AST had an abysmal play rate because of how badly they balanced AST's kit. And then the devs buffed AST.

I'm not saying for everyone to stop playing WHM so they'll see but know that unless people actually complain hard enough. Other than that, the whole "WHM is fine, AST is just OP" is rather tone deaf because nerfing AST only causes it to have an even lower playrate along with a weaker healing kit than WHM.

Let's remember that 5.0 people actively locked out AST because it's healing didn't justify the cards.

[Rika007]

I'm not saying for everyone to stop playing WHM so they'll see but know that unless people actually complain hard enough.

Nah you right though. Look over at the DPS side of things. Unless your job is named Summoner, every major rework has been preceded by people just outright abandoning a job. (In the case of SMN though it was 8 non stop years of complaining that finally brought about it's rework). Those buffs AST got in 5.0? Cause no one was playing it.

WHM will never get the attention it needs as long as players keep playing the job. Which may mean this argument is lost from the start. But saying to nerf AST's awesome ability is not the way to go.

[Semirhage]

Exactly, nerfing Macro will only prove that some people don't care about healer balance but to want everything else to be on WHM's level when that level is rock bottom and barebones.

It being popular is so sad be a use it's what the devs use to see if it's in trouble. ShB 5.0 AST had an abysmal play rate because of how badly they balanced AST's kit. And then the devs buffed AST.

I'm not saying for everyone to stop playing WHM so they'll see but know that unless people actually complain hard enough. Other than that, the whole "WHM is fine, AST is just OP" is rather tone deaf because nerfing AST only causes it to have an even lower playrate along with a weaker healing kit than WHM.

Let's remember that 5.0 people actively locked out AST because it's healing didn't justify the cards.

It's possible to believe that WHM is not fine and AST having an AOE Benediction that also deals damage is overpowered at the same time.

I'm hearing nothing that I haven't heard before in expansions past from AST and SCH mains alike. "What!? My class isn't overpowered! It's *merely* really good at everything, has a ton of zero-cost instant healing, a bunch of buffs, and can do several things your class can't. I'm sure you could be brought up with a few tweaks here and there."

What weaknesses does AST have? No really? Infinite MP, scaling raid DPS contribution that's only going to get higher as the expansion continues, a huge buffet of free oGCD heals with short cooldowns, great mobility, the utter BS that is Neutral Sect AOE shielding if the occasion calls for it after Square claims they made it a "non-shield" healer, and now a 3 minute cooldown that just dumps all over the power level of other 3 minute cooldowns.

WHM is a crap healer that needs an overhaul to drag its terminally stuck in ARR carcass upward (it'll never happen, but it needs to), but part of an overhaul that leads to fun, interesting healer balance is introducing some actual weaknesses into the healers that presently have zero downsides. And no, "having tons of buttons to press" isn't a weakness.

As Risvertasashi said earlier, this isn't even just about WHM sucking. AST is the only healer that can cheese the hell out of this mechanic. People are locking slots to AST because Death's Toll's mechanic heavily caters toward Macrocosmos' strengths, while none of the other healers have an answer to it. Is it *really* the case that one of the healers with zero weaknesses isn't a teeeeeensy bit OP?

[Rika007]

It's possible to believe that WHM is not fine and AST having an AOE Benediction that also deals damage is overpowered at the same time.

I'm hearing nothing that I haven't heard before in expansions past from AST and SCH mains alike. "What!? My class isn't overpowered! It's *merely* really good at everything, has a ton of zero-cost instant healing, a bunch of buffs, and can do several things your class can't. I'm sure you could be brought up with a few tweaks here and there."

What weaknesses does AST have? No really? Infinite MP, scaling raid DPS contribution that's only going to get higher as the expansion continues, a huge buffet of free oGCD heals with short cooldowns, great mobility, the utter BS that is Neutral Sect AOE shielding if the occasion calls for it after Square claims they made it a "non-shield" healer, and now a 3 minute cooldown that just dumps all over the power level of other 3 minute cooldowns.

WHM is a crap healer that needs an overhaul to drag its terminally stuck in ARR carcass upward (it'll never happen, but it needs to), but part of an overhaul that leads to fun, interesting healer balance is introducing some actual weaknesses into the healers that have zero downsides. And no, "having tons of buttons to press" isn't a weakness.

I'm sorry but let's look at this from a wide perspective... Why the heck should a job have a 'weakness'. In games like this weakness just is another way to take away player agency and place it in the hands of others. Which is why they have done things like remove refresh from the ranged DPS, give tanks better self healing (if your name isn't dark knight anyway) removed things like the piercing debuff, tp requirements on physical attacks, etc etc.

Players don't want to feel weak. The weakness is no matter how powerful your class is you're not doing any on content savage or ultimate stuff as a one man or woman party. AST actually feels amazing, and a lot of that has to do with Macrocosmos being a very powerful and fun ability to use. And it SHOULD be VERY powerful. It's an ability you get to use at most maybe 3-4 times a fight. We should be looking at why do Benediction, LillyBell and Dissipation NOT feel like superpowered abilities, not trying to strip Macro down. Especially when we talk about how boring healing as a role has gotten.

As Risvertasashi said earlier, this isn't even just about WHM sucking. AST is the only healer that can cheese the hell out of this mechanic. People are locking slots to AST because Death's Toll's mechanic heavily caters toward Macrocosmos' strengths, while none of the other healers have an answer to it. Is it *really* the case that one of the healers with zero weaknesses isn't a teeeeeensy bit OP?

This argument would hold a lot more weight if players in general viewed healing in a positive light. But they don't Scholar players haven't been happy for a long time and the luster is already coming off Sage. Heck AST players still have issues too. So yes, AST isn't OP. The other healers lack the ability to take agency into their own hands as well is far more of an issue that should be addressed.

[Semirhage]

We're gonna have to agree to disagree on that one. I think a job being really good at everything is a huge red flag. That's textbook overpowered.

[Rika007]

We're gonna have to agree to disagree on that one. I think a job being really good at everything is a huge red flag. That's textbook overpowered.

Trust me, I fully understand your view point, I just do disagree with it. My grounds is that AST only feels OP because they are the only healer in the game that has any semblance of a well built kit (this isn't to denigrate the issues it has with its card kit many AST players have, or some of its superfluous abilities). The rest of the healers are just missing something or poorly built in general, be it Sage missing recovery buttons or rDPS support, SCH's aetherflow kit being at war with itself at high level play, or White Mage's... everything.

To put a real life spin on it, when you have only one worker who is prepared enough to properly do a job on a whole team, that worker will look far better then everyone there by a long shot. The goal should not be to put limits in place to make that one worker less efficient so the other workers don't look bad, instead you want to do training (in this case, reworks), to get the other workers up to par.

Also from just a playability standpoint, Macro as an ability just FEELS good. It feels impactful and powerful. Personally it's the only healing ability in the game that feels this way to me. So overall I'm just against it being touched. I instead just look at these other abilities healers have that seem so bad but have potential. I would love for Lilly Bell to be transformed into something that White Mage players have full agency over, that they can choose to pulse it themselves rather then wait for the damage to hit.

[Semirhage]

I'm too cynical for that. I mained WHM from ARR through Stormblood. I've seen competition from two busted overpowered healer jobs claiming that being extremely good at everything is just "good design". I healed through 20% Balance and Scholar doing as much damage as Ninja, while being told those things were "just good design", "WHM just needs to be brought up a little to compete". I've also been around when WHM dares to have a patch where they do more damage than the other healers and the screaming that entails. The thing is, WHM is never, ever going to be a well-designed job so long a Square keeps hammering this awful "pure simple straightforward no frills" fake identity onto it, and the good-at-everything overpowered healers are going to say "there there, I hope they fix you someday" until the heat death of the universe. Square has already demonstrated they'd rather topple the entire design they set forth for both AST and SCH than EVER give WHM anything interesting or fun to do.

I had a point in there somewhere, but it got lost in my being angry about how terribly Square has treated WHM since 3.2. I get what you're saying, but I still think that being good at everything isn't "good design". It's overpowered design that creates role imbalance because it warps the whole role around itself. Everyone else has to be just as overpowered, or be left in the dust.

[ty_taurus]

I'm too cynical for that. I mained WHM from ARR through Stormblood. I've seen competition from two busted overpowered healer jobs claiming that being extremely good at everything is just "good design". I healed through 20% Balance and Scholar doing as much damage as Ninja, while being told those things were "just good design", "WHM just needs to be brought up a little to compete". I've also been around when WHM dares to have a patch where they do more damage than the other healers and the screaming that entails. The thing is, WHM is never, ever going to be a well-designed job so long a Square keeps hammering this awful "pure simple straightforward no frills" fake identity onto it, and the good-at-everything overpowered healers are going to say "there there, I hope they fix you someday" until the heat death of the universe. Square has already demonstrated they'd rather topple the entire design they set forth for both AST and SCH than EVER give WHM anything interesting or fun to do.

I had a point in there somewhere, but it got lost in my being angry about how terribly Square has treated WHM since 3.2. I get what you're saying, but I still think that being good at everything isn't "good design". It's overpowered design that creates role imbalance because it warps the whole role around itself. Everyone else has to be just as overpowered, or be left in the dust.

WHM's design made a lot more sense during ARR where it and SCH traded strengths and weaknesses and complimented each other very well. WHM had a significantly easier time healing the party where SCH just couldn't. Your only way to recover from heavy raid-wide damage as 2 SCHs was to Succor spam, which was just not very effective. It also had Enmity control in Shroud of Saints where I can't actually remember whether or not SCH had any way of lowering their aggro, which was actually a big deal back then. In exchange, SCH's had more mitigation, damage, and better MP management. The reason why these trade offs made sense was because you only had 2 healers, but once we threw in a third wheel into the ring, suddenly that changes.

WHM's identity of being the one that can comfortably heal big damage now can't be exclusively true otherwise it becomes mandatory. This became more apparent over the course of HW, because as AST's utility got buffed, suddenly WHM's ability to do better something the others could comfortably do anyway was no longer a legitimate strength, and rather than adapting to this revelation, they just dug their heels in the sand in SB stating that it would be sacrilegious to WHM's job fantasy from the rest of the series--a statement that I will never understand for a number of reasons. First, because WHM has offered offensive support many times in the series previously in the form of spells like Might/Bravery, Faith, and Haste. Second, because the design team seems to pick and choose when a job's fantasy from the series is worth defending so much so to the point of turning an entire job into a gimmicky minigame in Blue Mage, but they're also perfectly fine trampling over others like Bard who is absolutely nothing like any Final Fantasy Bard ever in the series anywhere.

[HyperiusUltima]

So, just skimming through here…a lot of the arguments I’m noticing revolve around saying that “AST MACROCOSMOS AOE BENEDICTION TOO OP PLS NERF!”

I believe this stigma is because the average PF player always gravitates towards the path of least resistance without considering the difficulty.

Yes, Macrocosmos can destroy HP = 1 MECHANICS. I believe this was intended at high level. The one thing that really annoys me is the narrative that AST deserves this heavy handed nerf when in reality if you play the job, it’s a lot harder to manage compared to SCH, SGE, and WHM.

Just because WHM is literally in the ground doesn’t mean it can’t clear said mechanic. This is why you have TWO HEALERS. Every healing pair has healing tools to fix the problem along with the other DPS and Tanks when you make a comp. It’s a matter of figuring out what healing combo you need to do after said mechanic resolves to recover damage.

Also, for damn good measure, realize Macro IS NOT AN AOE BENEDICTION. It’s HP Storage - a mechanic we haven’t seen before until this expac. It’s a good mechanic. We shouldn’t erase GOOD JOB DESIGN because of one mechanic in an entire raid tier.

The real narrative we need to drive is WHM is too weak in terms of healing upkeep and needs MP Buffs, a change to LotB to be useful ANYTIME, not just during times the WHM is getting hit; stronger healing overall, and lastly making Misery DPS neutral.

[Semirhage]

Also, for damn good measure, realize Macro IS NOT AN AOE BENEDICTION.

Distinction without a difference. The amount of healing it stores makes it effectively an AOE Benediction with very little effort. It's like saying Essential Dignity isn't Benediction in ARR dungeons- yeah it technically has a potency, that potency just happens to full heal its target 99% of the time. Being spoiled for choice isn't a "downside". "I have so many busted strong abilities that it's hard to juggle all of them" is not an actual weakness.

The real narrative we need to drive is WHM is too weak in terms of healing upkeep and needs MP Buffs, a change to LotB to be useful ANYTIME, not just during times the WHM is getting hit; stronger healing overall, and lastly making Misery DPS neutral.

That's a secondary discussion. WHM needs a lot more than a few changes to its MP economy and lilies. The way its entire kit is designed encourages bad play. Its cooldowns are WAY too long for how comparatively strong shorter cooldowns are on the other healers. Its kit doesn't support its supposed "selfish healer" identity. Its design is stuck in ARR. It needs a redesign.