Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[ForsakenRoe]

I'll admit I'm not familiar with lazzie, but in the few times I've seen Mr. Happy, he's usually been on MNK or a physical ranged. Also, pretty sure Mizzteq is a tank main.

I know they probably dabble in healers, but when people talk about dedicated healer mains, I don't think any of their names are usually mentioned.

MrHappy's more like a 'moonlights as a healer at times' kinda guy afaik. I don't recall him progging any 8man Savages as a healer, but I do know he progged Delubrum Savage as a WHM. I think they have to be cautious on how 'strongly' they push on certain points with their questions, so as not to make a scene that is bad for PR in the interview and risk losing their 'influencer' status, hence why they get given such non-answers re: healers and go 'ok fair enough, next question, is G'raha pregnant' or whatever

The only healer main that I am aware of who went to EW’s media tour is Spofie. From Mr Happy’s videos, I think he plays P Ranged at the moment. There were a couple of good questions from Happy and Mizztek though that were related to healer issues. It would be really nice to have someone like Momo or Rinon in these events. Honestly though, I don’t expect the questions and feedback to go beyond what Happy and Mizztek already asked.

Ah, but the copium there is that those questions were asked pre-EW. Now, since then, we've had the complaints about the role increase in severity, in number, and we've had the Abyssos dilemma which got so bad, even JP asked about it. It might be enough ammunition to say 'okay, pre-EW you said X about the plan for healers, and it has lead to increased complaints about the role, and Abyssos in particular was a very bleak time for the role's participation. Since then, we've also seen TOP get cleared with zero healers, whereas previous 'non-standard' ultimate clears had at least one healer present. If anything, the role's health is getting worse, not better. Can we get more detail on what plans you have for the role going forward?' And then if they give a non-answer again, those of us who are sick of the non-answers can say 'that's all I needed to hear, it confirms our worst fears' and move to a different role or different game entirely, because it's clearly not going to be getting better for another 2 years

IIRC there was a Mogtalk episode (Frosty's podcast) which was about healers, which had both Momo and Rinon on it. And IIRC on that episode, the general consensus from both Momo and Rinon was effectively to have some 'damage rotation' like SB design. One or two extra buttons on each healer, with either a DOT to enforce a 'cooldown' of sorts, or a hard-CD like Sonic Break or Goring Blade has.

EG (and yes I'm saying it again sue me), if we make WHM's Dia 12s instead of 30, and give it ONE new button with a 15s CD (Water, later Banish), that takes our 'Glare per minute' count from 18 to 11 straight away

[ty_taurus]

Something I will gladly become a broken record about is also how pitiful Sage’s attempt at being the healer to address Shadowbringers healer feedback was.

Regardless of anything, there is clearly a demand for an aggressive healer. Rather than take the most tepid route possible and have less DPS variety than every other healer, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just go all in on that concept and make a hyper-offensive healer that plays like a borderline caster DPS and see how well that goes.

If we compare DPS engagement to spiciness, Sage is whole wheat bread.

[OdinelStarrei]

MrHappy's more like a 'moonlights as a healer at times' kinda guy afaik. I don't recall him progging any 8man Savages as a healer, but I do know he progged Delubrum Savage as a WHM. I think they have to be cautious on how 'strongly' they push on certain points with their questions, so as not to make a scene that is bad for PR in the interview and risk losing their 'influencer' status, hence why they get given such non-answers re: healers and go 'ok fair enough, next question, is G'raha pregnant' or whatever



Ah, but the copium there is that those questions were asked pre-EW. Now, since then, we've had the complaints about the role increase in severity, in number, and we've had the Abyssos dilemma which got so bad, even JP asked about it. It might be enough ammunition to say 'okay, pre-EW you said X about the plan for healers, and it has lead to increased complaints about the role, and Abyssos in particular was a very bleak time for the role's participation. Since then, we've also seen TOP get cleared with zero healers, whereas previous 'non-standard' ultimate clears had at least one healer present. If anything, the role's health is getting worse, not better. Can we get more detail on what plans you have for the role going forward?' And then if they give a non-answer again, those of us who are sick of the non-answers can say 'that's all I needed to hear, it confirms our worst fears' and move to a different role or different game entirely, because it's clearly not going to be getting better for another 2 years

See, that's the rub, isn't it? In other games, if something is complete garbage, has questionable design choices, or a litany of other problems, if the game is supported, you have a fair chance of getting some serious adjustments or changes within a reasonable timeframe. Maybe you'd even be blessed with some real, honest to god communication from the people responsible for your gameplay experience instead of some PR filtered nightmare.

In this game, if something isn't coherent by the X.1 patch, I pretty much have to give up and wait at the minimum, two years for the job to get another layer via expansion changes. And based on what's happened to all my favorite jobs, I have lost the dice roll every single time.

People told me "they're reworking Dark Knight and tanks so that they can room to expand on it more in EW!" Yeah, and how well did that work out, how did my job/role "expand" outside just shoving more unneeded, unthinking garbage on top of it, assuming it wasn't reworked into oblivion? When they removed like half of SCH's kit from SB to "make room" or whatever they are trying to do, what levels of depth and gameplay at a core level did they actually add in those two years? Answer: None that I've noticed, it's all lip service and non-answers, but we added damage types on flying text after a decade, so I should be satisfied I guess.

The last two expansion releases, my beloved jobs shrink in their complexity, in their engagement, in the very way I interact with the game's content. So if a game's combat experience isn't expanding at a base level, but instead just stacking more BS on top of itself that doesn't effectively matter, what is actually the point of getting invested in anything?

But no, it's always my/the players fault. We asked for the current state of this mess, apparently. If I knew that me asking for a raid mitigation for all tanks, and to fix some pet jank would lead to tanks, healers, and SMN being reduced to their current state, I'd cut off my own tongue. And that's the proper word for it, by the way. These aren't reworks anymore, they're just straight up taking stuff away, not replacing it with suitable alternatives, and calling it a rework. It's a reduction, because they don't think we're capable of anything better, that's how pathetic they think we are, just look at how Sage is designed. Of course, not until they throw something like P5 TOP or P6 DSR at us, then we're apparently the smartest, most dedicated players to exist, how much fun you're actually having doesn't matter.

[Aravell]

MrHappy's more like a 'moonlights as a healer at times' kinda guy afaik. I don't recall him progging any 8man Savages as a healer, but I do know he progged Delubrum Savage as a WHM. I think they have to be cautious on how 'strongly' they push on certain points with their questions, so as not to make a scene that is bad for PR in the interview and risk losing their 'influencer' status, hence why they get given such non-answers re: healers and go 'ok fair enough, next question, is G'raha pregnant' or whatever

That's why I don't expect any of the regular influencers to ask any hard questions, they don't want to lose their status. Plus, they probably vet interview questions beforehand and say "You can't ask that" to any hard questions.

The only hope is for someone to go off script and put Yoshida on the spot while risking their influencer status, and that's not likely to happen.

[Heroman3003]

Rather than take the most tepid route possible and have less DPS variety than every other healer, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just go all in on that concept and make a hyper-offensive healer that plays like a borderline caster DPS and see how well that goes.

Because fundamentally game and all content is designed with core idea that it can be beaten with any given set of jobs. That means that all jobs within a role must be approximately equal at both doing their role thing and their effective DPS. For healers, that means that unless they fundamentally step away from core design principles they've been trying to start game towards with every expansion since ARR, every healer just have equal amount of unconditional, easily accessible, and equitable healing, and approximately same DPS as other healers, assuming it's played optimally.

We know that they won't add actual DPS healer because it breaks entire balance of role system. We know they won't add different utility levels at sacrifice of healing or DPS because they tried that with DPS roles and keep getting complaints about how roles that have utility are 'handicapped' damage wise, so clearly people don't care for that. If a job is within a specific role, it will fundamentally not be different from all other jobs in that role, because the game as a whole is designed with that in mind, and until they fundamental design decision is changed, which I don't see happening any time soon with nearly all content so far potentially needing retroactive rebalancing, you shouldn't expect radically unique jobs, or radical changes to specific jobs that step outside the role mould without whole role being altered same way.

[Supersnow845]

Because fundamentally game and all content is designed with core idea that it can be beaten with any given set of jobs. That means that all jobs within a role must be approximately equal at both doing their role thing and their effective DPS. For healers, that means that unless they fundamentally step away from core design principles they've been trying to start game towards with every expansion since ARR, every healer just have equal amount of unconditional, easily accessible, and equitable healing, and approximately same DPS as other healers, assuming it's played optimally.

We know that they won't add actual DPS healer because it breaks entire balance of role system. We know they won't add different utility levels at sacrifice of healing or DPS because they tried that with DPS roles and keep getting complaints about how roles that have utility are 'handicapped' damage wise, so clearly people don't care for that. If a job is within a specific role, it will fundamentally not be different from all other jobs in that role, because the game as a whole is designed with that in mind, and until they fundamental design decision is changed, which I don't see happening any time soon with nearly all content so far potentially needing retroactive rebalancing, you shouldn't expect radically unique jobs, or radical changes to specific jobs that step outside the role mould without whole role being altered same way.

We have a perfect example of them doing this in the old healers, take SB, SCH is juggling 5 DOT’s along with the fairy and AST is playing yugioh in the corner while WHM is basically just using stone and 2 DOT’s, yet WHM was fully viable, sure the lily system was hot garbage but it didn’t make WHM unviable

It’s not terribly hard to make differing complexity in rotations that do the relative same damage, square enix has just designed themselves into a corner because they have generated button bloat with the excessive number of free heals we have, all healers could do with a HPS cut in order to allow more buttons so that they can actually return interesting design

[ty_taurus]

Because fundamentally game and all content is designed with core idea that it can be beaten with any given set of jobs. That means that all jobs within a role must be approximately equal at both doing their role thing and their effective DPS. For healers, that means that unless they fundamentally step away from core design principles they've been trying to start game towards with every expansion since ARR, every healer just have equal amount of unconditional, easily accessible, and equitable healing, and approximately same DPS as other healers, assuming it's played optimally.

We know that they won't add actual DPS healer because it breaks entire balance of role system. We know they won't add different utility levels at sacrifice of healing or DPS because they tried that with DPS roles and keep getting complaints about how roles that have utility are 'handicapped' damage wise, so clearly people don't care for that. If a job is within a specific role, it will fundamentally not be different from all other jobs in that role, because the game as a whole is designed with that in mind, and until they fundamental design decision is changed, which I don't see happening any time soon with nearly all content so far potentially needing retroactive rebalancing, you shouldn't expect radically unique jobs, or radical changes to specific jobs that step outside the role mould without whole role being altered same way.

But what matters for balance is the destination, not the route that you took to get there.

It doesn't really matter, for example, if you write an equation that looks like this:



or an equation that looks like this:



Regardless, both answers equal 100. Or in other words, as long as the output of each job reaches roughly the same general area, then how complex the route a specific job takes to get there is largely irrelevant.

[mallleable]

Healers need to be good mages before they can be good healers. When things are going wrong they need to be able to fix those problems, but they also need to feel like they are contributing in a meaningful way when things are going right. Only having a couple of dps spells is not good mage design, and they don't feel meaningful to use when thigs are going right.

[Maltothoris]

The crusade for healer justice never ends.

Edit: Also never underestimate our ability to bring up stuff said by yoshi p in regards to healers mainly because he talks so little about them that it's easier to categorize everything that is said about them.

[ForsakenRoe]

See, that's the rub, isn't it? In other games, if something is complete garbage, has questionable design choices, or a litany of other problems, if the game is supported, you have a fair chance of getting some serious adjustments or changes within a reasonable timeframe. Maybe you'd even be blessed with some real, honest to god communication from the people responsible for your gameplay experience instead of some PR filtered nightmare.

This is the thing. We meme in hindsight about the whole 'we would rather you don't play Demonology' from WOW, where they nerfed it by like 20% to get people off of it while they reworked it, but at the end of the day, the rework is pretty well received. Also, Paladin (mainly Retribution) got a massive overhaul in an offpatch (the equivalent of our 6.15, for example) that completely reworked it's playstyle from 'horrendously immobile' to a viable midranged combatant, with talents allowing the majority of your single target rotation to have 15y or so range to them. Meanwhile here, we can't even get a second charge on Lightspeed without it being signed off with actual paperwork filed, it feels like

If the AST rework is awful gameplay-wise in 7.0, then we won't get another chance at un-awful-ing it until 8.0, at best we will get bandaid fixes to make it 'slightly more playable'. DRG, on the other hand, will get an emergency re-rework in 7.05 just in time for Savage, most likely, since it is a DPS