Can we delete Seraph, Dissipation, Excog and Sacred Soil? Some ideas on top of it...

[Icecylee]

Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to assume that if they added 2-4 more damage related buttons to any given kit, they wouldn't/couldn't just take some of the average potency out of the filler spell and then push it into the new buttons and keep DPS on average roughly the same. But even if they didn't, I don't think it would really matter. They constantly increase the potency on lower level skills for whatever reason ("current" tier balance reasons, presumably), and older content's always getting easier and faster to clear on account of it.

People that actually LIKE healing (that is, refilling health bars from damage) will be left in the cold with their complaints unaddressed. People that like the current system of healing will find themselves expelled from it, told they're doing it wrong, or attacked for being bad healers when they are competent ones today.

This bullet point in particular is kind of ironic though, because it's not like the people who Liked Things The Old Way had any bones thrown their way. No one got to keep the older, slightly more involved/kits. Everything got thrown under the bus! So it's a little harder to be sympathetic to the issue.

As for the lower skilled players... well, IMO it's not a terrible thing if maybe the highest tiers of content aren't super accessible to people without a firm grasp on the fundamentals. Having a reason to want to become better at the game isn't a bad thing. Story stuff? Yeah, you should absolutely be able to carrying a super bad player or three through it. I can't imagine that changing even if the healer dps kits get a little more complex, because we can already hard carry absolutely awful DPS that don't seem to have ever read tooltips and have no idea how their rotation works as is.



THAT SAID, I am not against the idea of having a sliding scale of complexity for various jobs between roles. Melees, Casters and even Tanks to a degree already have that (not so much Ranged tho imo...), and I tend to gravitate towards different ends of the scales depending on role. But even then, I feel like the GCD kits as they are now are a tad bit *too* simple, and everything should have some room for player skill growth and the ability to fuck things up. Maybe the easiest one doesn't need to be a TON more complicated, but I firmly believe anyone should be able to, at the very least, handle three GCDs they hit with some level of frequency. I could easily imagine a WHM that's still fairly simple like that. An aero that gave you a 15~20s damage increase buff rather than a dot, a water spell that had a 30s recast while still being on the GCD, then a filler stone. Having the timers on the player themself instead of on individual enemies would make tracking them a lot easier for a role that isn't always guaranteed to be targeting an enemy, and keep your attention focused on the same general area as your other healer cooldowns. It's a little more involved, but not so much it would alienate anyone. And then the others could go up from there.

[Renathras]

Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to assume that if they added 2-4 more damage related buttons to any given kit, they wouldn't/couldn't just take some of the average potency out of the filler spell and then push it into the new buttons and keep DPS on average roughly the same.

That just sounds a combination of annoying and pointless. Though I agree it's probably how it would shake out, which is why I think not all healers should adopt it.

This bullet point in particular is kind of ironic though, because it's not like the people who Liked Things The Old Way had any bones thrown their way. No one got to keep the older, slightly more involved/kits.

As I've noted before, at least some healers weren't really that more involved - mainly WHM, though some of the other "complexity" is very rose tinted glasses. And as I've also noted before, at least part of this was due to healers playing the complex Jobs complaining they had to do so much more work for their damage. "Not being bored", as it turns out, is never enough...

That said, I'm not suggesting sympathy. I'm suggesting pragmatism. Compromise. Without it, you aren't likely to get ANYthing you want.

EDIT:

As for the lower skilled players... well, IMO it's not a terrible thing if maybe the highest tiers of content aren't super accessible to people without a firm grasp on the fundamentals.

We're not talking about "a firm grasp on the fundamentals", so please don't use euphemisms to make your position sound more reasonable than it is. I genuinely hate when people do that. What you're talking about is removing people's capability to do content in any way, and being happy with that result. FFXIV isn't that game outside of Ultimates and some at-level Savage later fights, if that. You have to be competent to clear those things already as it is. No one is clearing P1S or Auria without "a firm grasp on the fundamentals" of their Jobs right now unless they're paying out the wazoo for it, and that would be unchanged under your new system anyway.

It's not "the fundamentals" you're talking about.

Moreover, you're trying to CHANGE "the fundamentals" to "a complex damage kit on healers" and then tell anyone who doesn't want to be playing a damage dealer - and by this I mean with an involved rotation, NOT "doing damage"; we already do that without an involved rotation - that they are unwelcome in the game. Never going to happen with these Devs, and if it somehow did, it would likely kill the game.

This is the kind of thinking I DON'T like and WON'T support: An elitist mindset that THEY are good enough to clear content but other people, who are competent under the current system, should be disallowed, thus making the content more exclusive. I don't suffer elitists or entitled blue bloods well, and I'll say no more than that.

Note I'm not CALLING you either of those things - if you choose to identify as such, that's on you..

For my part, as I see it, you have a lot of mid-core players that are competent - not fantastic supercomputers in a meat suit that parse 99.5% or higher, but COMPETENT - and they're able to clear at least some fights, get better, and improve. This is good for the community and good for the game. There's already content they'll never clear and many never even try (Ultimates, and again, some of the high end Savage fights of tiers, so 3rd/4th fights at level, and even some Extremes), but they're able to progress and clear things at their pace. This is good for every MMO it's ever been done in.

And as you note - and I said above - you'll be able to carry "super bad player(s)" in the end anyway. So that's absolutely no reason to support it.

Hell, you'd probably call me a bad, but I read my tooltips, review guides on thebalance, etc. I could probably clear a lot more content with a static, I just can't commit to a raid schedule like that and refuse to run a parser against the ToS.

.

THAT SAID, I am not against the idea of having a sliding scale of complexity for various jobs between roles. Melees, Casters and even Tanks to a degree already have that (not so much Ranged tho imo...), and I tend to gravitate towards different ends of the scales depending on role. But even then, I feel like the GCD kits as they are now are a tad bit *too* simple, and everything should have some room for player skill growth and the ability to fuck things up. Maybe the easiest one doesn't need to be a TON more complicated, but I firmly believe anyone should be able to, at the very least, handle three GCDs they hit with some level of frequency. I could easily imagine a WHM that's still fairly simple like that. An aero that gave you a 15~20s damage increase buff rather than a dot, a water spell that had a 30s recast while still being on the GCD, then a filler stone. Having the timers on the player themself instead of on individual enemies would make tracking them a lot easier for a role that isn't always guaranteed to be targeting an enemy, and keep your attention focused on the same general area as your other healer cooldowns. It's a little more involved, but not so much it would alienate anyone. And then the others could go up from there.

But...WHM...ALREADY has 3 GCD damage spells: Glare, Dia, Misery. So it's already there.

My personal position is each role should have a very entry-friendly Job. WHM is already that for the healers, and frankly always has been. At its MOST complex ever, it had two more DoTs. Trading one for Misery and having more healing tools to work with has it at about that same level of complexity today. Having an extra button just to HAVE AN EXTRA BUTTON is stupid to me, and it's something I hate about a lot of the melee Jobs which have a ton of buttons for no good reason. AST is really bad about this as well. Crown Draw doesn't shift into Crown Play. Draw doesn't shift into Play OR into Redraw (which can only be used after Draw anyway). Why does Undraw even EXIST?

How many extra buttons do you need that do the EXACT. SAME. THING. anyway? And no, a slight variation of the EXACT. SAME. THING. is still, for all intents and purposes, the EXACT. SAME. THING. A damage buff with a 30 sec timer or a DoT that lasts 30 seconds mechanically still ends up the same way - with you pushing the button every 30 sec unless you're holding it for a boss that's about to go untargetable to use on the reopener instead.

Again, though, I'm fine with some Jobs having those.

Because I get there are people who genuinely derive enjoyment from having them.

But I don't think every Job needs it, and I think there are enough Jobs in each role for AT LEST ONE to not have it.

For Tanks, WAR is pretty straightforward. The only way they could make it simpler is to bake in Storm's Eye and remove the button. Other than that, it's pretty simple and straightforward right now, and a lot of people love it for that. Meanwhile we have GNB and DRK over here for those that want busy (GNB) or complex (DRK) rotations, and PLD for those that want some added utility buttons.

Casters have a range from SMN (easy with some utility), RDM (a touch harder, though not much, with a lot of utility), and BLM (a good deal harder requiring a lot of fight knowledge, but also bringing raw damage)

If they add a new Caster at some point, they should put it between RDM and BLM, sorta like how MNK is kind of between DRG and NIN.

Ranged is weird since they're all "easy", though in different ways (MCH has a rigid rotation, BRD is a more open rotation [mainly keeping songs going] with procs, DNC is proc city)

Melee is also weird in that there's not really an "easy" one, though RPR comes the closest to that. Most all of them have DoTs and/or upkeep buffs and "use on CD" button bloat and so on.

Healers are like Ranged except their complexity comes from their healing kits, not their damage kits...which are more or less identical anyway.

.

Here's what I CAN'T understand, though:

The insistence that we can't leave even ONE healer alone like it is right now.

Like, we're already talking about upping the complexity on 3 of them to a level that you folks wanting complexity would like. So why is it you can't stand leaving just ONE alone?

[Renathras]

I disagree here.

And this exact same reasoning goes to changing healing in encounters going forward. So...thank you for making my point?

The point is: Whether making healing more involved in encounters OR increasing damage kits (either complexity, damage, or both), the Devs do not need to go backdate any content.

So people need to stop using that as a reason in any of their arguments to suggest their position is stronger than anyone else's. That was the point I was trying to get at.

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As to the last: Yes, it does not REQUIRE it doing more damage.

...my point is, it tends to lead to the COMPLAINT by players playing them that they AREN'T doing more damage for the added "work" of playing them.

I agree - and have even argued this position; that if people won't complain about it, then there's no issue having healers with various complexity that just deal about the same damage as today, which is more or less equal/balanced.

Once again, thank you for...I think...agreeing with me.

[Icecylee]

Duno if this is just me misinterrupting your responses incorrectly, but you come across as weirdly hostile about this topic despite everyone involved knowing it's not really going to have any baring on what the devs do. If it's just me parsing your tone/text wrong then apologizes, but, like, there's no real reason to take people having opposing opinions on what *they* think makes a game fun so personally. Anyway...


With regards to the fundamentals comment... that's because no change the devs make short of increasing the healing requirements by like.... x5 or x10 of what they are now is going to prevent *anyone* from clearing Story Mode Content (which is all that really matters), and if there are people out there that can't handle having to hit a dot slightly more often, or having two/three damage buttons they push at intervals between the filler, or whatever wound up changing from long dot one filler... then tbqh they probably shouldn't be doing party content with other random humans to begin with. Some rando doing suboptimal damage but still making an effort isn't going to prevent someone else from seeing the story. We know that from all the bad players already out there. And worst comes to worst, we're already in the process of making everything story related NPC-able.'


I also already explained why I wouldn't leave any healer as it is now; I think they're under where the minimum bar should be. The complexity floor for every other role is a bit higher, even if it's probably in ways you would consider "annoying". WAR's got a combo with two different finishers then a spike damage button they pop with some frequency. SMN is, admittedly, a lot of hitting a single button, but even then you still have more GCDs to hit and more things to track and be aware of since each phase of your rotation plays a bit differently or has positional requirements. Bard might just effectively be the same 1 dot (beyond the opener) 1 filler thing... but even then it's got a proc, the gauge spender, and then the song rotations and ogcd spam. "oh but healers need to ogcd heal too!" and tanks should be popping their defensive cooldowns, and in the context of easy content dps are popping damage related cooldowns way more than healers are using healing ones. (not directly related but reaper is definitely the Easy Melee, it's doing even less than SMN is under level 70 lol)

I suppose there's also that on a more personal notes, I'd *like* to be able to go back to being a white mage like I was In The Old Days, but if it stayed exactly as it is now I still wouldn't be able to stomach it. As you stated it wasn't really *that* much more complex before in the grand scheme of things (even if I would argue it was more different than you give it credit for, frequency of varied button presses goes a long way), so *I* don't see why there's an insistence that anything needs to remain as it currently is. My own personal sweet spot for how busy I'd like my jobs to feel are GNB, DNC and RDM (tho NIN is my melee as an outliner I suppose), so, opinions definitely gunna differ here. (i have a strong preference towards procs, too! The flow of dancer sort of reminds me of what healing is like when there's decent healing reqs, just with different damage buttons instead of changing targets)

But I know that's just because we're all arguing for things to be the way we'd all personally prefer. And that's fine. We don't really need to agree. It's not like the devs are going to poke their heads into this thread, see one reply with a massive 10 likes and conclude this is the one true way everything must be and start making massive adjustments right this minute. Probably not much point in continuing this particular argument tho since it basically seems to be boiling down to "i would like to have more buttons to push, and to push them more often" vs "i do not actually like pushing buttons related to damage, and having to push several in specific orders would be annoying"

[Sebazy]

So people need to stop using that as a reason in any of their arguments to suggest their position is stronger than anyone else's. That was the point I was trying to get at.

Yep, I can agree with that, it's pretty clear that SE don't really care about older content being 'authentic' to how it was at it's release. As long as it still functions and is clearable, it's all good and IMHO it's the right stance to take given just how much old content there is.

As to the last: Yes, it does not REQUIRE it doing more damage.

...my point is, it tends to lead to the COMPLAINT by players playing them that they AREN'T doing more damage for the added "work" of playing them.

What grounds is this opinion based on though? We have exactly this situation right now but you really don't see it raised as a concern that often especially relative to other issues.

The key point seems to be that DPS and healers tend to be much more ok with damage disparities when something is given in return. MCH has little to show for it falling behind thus you see a lot of complaints. Meanwhile Warrior's damage has fallen massively from grace with regards to casual content such as dungeons and now DRK handily out damages them with a huge burst window ontop of that. Of course you still see plenty of warriors around because they have the best invuln cooldown and survivability kit. Glance into the latest tank issues patch and there's no mention of damage being a concern despite there being a damage disparity.

It's the same with healers. Healers as a role took a pretty significant hit in relation to Tanks and DPS with Shadowbringers and AST is miles behind the other healers as well, they have their buffs to make up for it, yet outside of Savage and Ultimate (Or organised EX farms), those buffs frequently amount to very little, certainly not enough to close the gap to the other healers. Go look over Agalia, the first and second place clears of Byregot are great examples, first place was evidently in a pug, second place was in a full raid team. They go from a gap of 12 DPS to well over 1k once buff contributions are factored in. And then of course there's the occasions where some poor hapless soul decides to do the MSQ on an AST..... I can't remember the last time I saw an AST complain about it though? It's just not really an issue because they do get plenty in return for all that complexity even if it's not raw damage.

[Imora]

Disagree. I like current SCH outside dissipation. I hated HW scholar. I like excog and sacred soil. I also hate energy drain.

[Shurrikhan]

Here's what I CAN'T understand, though:

The insistence that we can't leave even ONE healer alone like it is right now.

Like, we're already talking about upping the complexity on 3 of them to a level that you folks wanting complexity would like. So why is it you can't stand leaving just ONE alone?

Here's what I can't get though:

The insistence that inferiority / blandness should be an identity... so long as that's applied only to WHM and done simply to prop up the remaining choices.

Like, the current depth interacted with across the majority of our time and casts spent in present-day contexts --the relevant topic across this thread-- is next to nothing. What need would WHM have to be screwed over by uniquely remaining hollowed out? The greater depth suggested here still provide no significant barrier to entry given that one could wholly get by without taking advantage of that complexity. So what need is there to leave ONE uniquely in dirt?

[Renathras]

Here's what I can't get though:

The insistence that inferiority / blandness should be an identity

Here's why you're not getting it:

Literally no one is arguing that.

You're not getting it because it is a caricature, a hyperbolic straw man, not an argument anyone is actually making.

That's your take on what people are arguing while ignoring what they're ACTUALLY arguing from THEIR perspective.

To many of us, it isn't "bland" at the present time, thus "blandness" is not its "identity" in our argument. Likewise inferiority. Does that make sense? I'm trying to think of some really easy real world counterpart that also isn't too political where people think of something completely different so the detractors attack them over things from the detractor's perspective, not realizing that it does not match the perspective of the people arguing for it.

To me, WHM right now is fun, engaging, intuitive, and enjoyable. Any player looking at its tooltips and just playing around with it while leveling to 90 has almost all the nuance of the Job without having to read an owner's manual on The Balance. You CAN (and I HAVE), but it comes down to what is almost entirely intuitive by just naturally picking up as you go playing the Job. Contrast with the other healers, whose nuances really often DO need some explanation. For example, the game doesn't describe Seraph as having "summoning sickness", nor suggest using Zoe with Healcannon(tm) for a highly potent GCD heal that is DPS neutral. It doesn't EXPLICITLY tell you you won't generate Faerie Gauge under Dissipation, nor list which spells will break Fey Union.

WHM's simple kit means I can take it into any content and it's my go-to healer for my first clears of anything if the other healer isn't already on WHM. Its simplicity IS its strength because its kit just WORKS. It does everything you need it to do without clunk or jank to stumble over. To get the same performance with AST you have to wade through all its janky button bloat. To perform at a similar level on SCH you have to overcome the clunk of many of its abilities not playing well together. But WHM just...works. The abilities don't fight each other, it's not clunky, it's not janky. The only things it is at all weird with are Confession, which many people clear content simply never using (and the use case is you simply pop it before multi-hit stack markers and enjoy the free extra healing) and Lilybell, which is better now that you can manually trigger it and its main issue is honestly the 180 sec rather than 120 sec CD. The only other smidge of nuance is knowing that Asylum (like other ground targeted effects) gets a bonus tick of healing when placed for everyone already in its AOE...but you don't really need that nor is it something you alter how you use Asylum based on.

The rest of its kit just WORKS, and even those parts are entirely salvageable.

It's the "just the facts, ma'am" of healers. No unneeded frills, all function with a dash of form.

It's like one person buying the latest custom sportscar that costs more than most of our houses while someone else drives an old pickup with the same gas mileage. Sure, the sports car looks sexy and has all the added features...but are you really going to use the onboard blender, 160 mph maximum speed, custom cup holders, and so on driving in bumper to bumper traffic to and from work every day? Enough to justify the price, added maintenance costs, and a user manual as thick as the Encyclopedia Britannica?

Simple and effective is a kind of utility itself, and is an identity worth having.

Disagree. I like current SCH outside dissipation. I hated HW scholar. I like excog and sacred soil. I also hate energy drain.

Largely agree. I hate Dissipation so much it isn't even on my hotbars and its why I won't use SCH in most any harder content anymore. I hate the jank of it (gives you AF stacks but won't generate Faerie Gauge OR buff AF spenders? It's basically a CD to get 3x more EDs and nothing else!) and hate the theme of it (SCH is supposedly a tactical healer that works with their Faerie partner, not that eats them for a power boost! That's RPR! )

I also hate Energy Drain. I get some people love it, but SCH is the only healer that has to trade away damage to do oGCD healing. Dissipation and ED are niche optimization buttons that otherwise bloat your hotbars, but I get some people love that. Which is why I feel more and more estranged from SCH and have started leaning on SGE more and more for my barrier Healer.

What grounds is this opinion based on though? We have exactly this situation right now but you really don't see it raised as a concern that often especially relative to other issues.

On two grounds:

1) Trading damage for utility works well in games designed for that; FFXIV is not such a game. You see complaints all the time from PLD's that they seldom/never use their utility buttons because there just aren't cases that call for them. Guard is an amazing thematic and potentially gameplay ability...that is almost never used. BECAUSE FFXIV fights are based around doing damage and beating enerages (the entire crux of the "all Jobs are DPSers" argument), utility that DOES NOT increase damage is seen as less preferable to just bringing more damage. We've already seen this be a concern in FFXIV's past.

2) It's not an issue right now so much BECAUSE it doesn't exist right now so much. If you look at damage within roles, the spread is pretty narrow. The highest DPSer in the game only does about 3% more damage than the lowest DPSer. Tanks and healers are even more compact than that. The disparity between a WAR and DRK's damage is pretty low. It does exist, yes, but it's VERY minimal, and its self-healing means healers can do more DPS to make up for it slightly anyway. And we have had situations where Jobs doing a few % less than the overall creates a situation where they've been blacklisted.

So these do seem to be issues that can't be ignored, and that is what this opinion is based on.

No one is blacklisting players from a party while they do MSQ/solo content because...well, there are no parties in solo content.

When we're talking balance, we're talking Extreme/Savage/Ultimate. Few people are making PFs for Aglaia, and no one doing so is blacklisting Jobs for damage disparity. (The only special rules I've seen are "No Job stones" and "Guns vs Gods")

[Shurrikhan]

Simple and effective is a kind of utility itself, and is an identity worth having.

Simple is literally just having less. That's it. That "it works," is necessary, but rarely sufficient.

Simple tools can create highly nuanced systems when put together well enough, but WHM is not that. It is simple in both its parts and in gestalt.

When WHM can put simple tools to uniquely interesting effect, I'd be sold. That would be a sufficient and fitting identity. But that, which would similarly require revitalizing changes to the job, seems to have more in common with what you've been arguing against than what you've been arguing for.


Let me clear: I don't hate present WHM relative to the other current healers. In dungeons, it's my go-to (apart from maybe SGE on my alt), simply because I get to ready Misery without cost to any uptime, and it seems... fine(?) in raids now that Misery is very worth snapping into raid buffs. But if we're going to revitalize the other three jobs, I see no reason why WHM should be held back from that. Yes, any such process should be done carefully. Yes, that all should pay close attention to each job's roots and the kinds of players they attract.

But let's not pretend that every WHM player plays WHM simply because it's simple. Are we to just forget, for instance, that it's the literal only healer one can start as or that healing gear in this game is very clearly styled towards the same motifs that WHM most centrally houses?

[Renathras]

Simple is literally just having less.

irl, I live a simple life. I don't "have less", other than having less baggage. Needless complexity is not a boon. Besides, even if that were true (it's not - it's just ANOTHER caricature/straw man), having more is not always better. For example, having less debt is simpler than having more debt. Does that make having more debt better? Of course not. More clunk, bloat, and jank is NOT a positive.

Simple tools can create highly nuanced systems when put together well enough, but WHM is not that. It is simple in both its parts and in gestalt.

Then it wouldn't be SIMPLE, would it? It's well put together right now. It's not COMPLEX. Hence it is simple. Once again: That is its strength.

When WHM can put simple tools to uniquely interesting effect, I'd be sold.

Are you sold on WHM right now? No? Then you are losing nothing (vs right now) if it remains the same.

Let me clear: I don't hate present WHM relative to the other current healers. In dungeons, it's my go-to (apart from maybe SGE on my alt), simply because I get to ready Misery without cost to any uptime, and it seems... fine(?) in raids now that Misery is very worth snapping into raid buffs. But if we're going to revitalize the other three jobs, I see no reason why WHM should be held back from that. Yes, any such process should be done carefully. Yes, that all should pay close attention to each job's roots and the kinds of players they attract.

I get THIS argument, but you don't understand the question being presented here.

It's not "let's revitalize 3 healers OR all 4 healers?", it's "let's overcomplicate 3 healers OR leave ALL FOUR healers as they are today". It's not "holding back" WHM to let WHM be the only one that is functional out of the box. That argument just makes no sense to me whatsoever. WHM's roots are of a simple, straightforward, direct healer. That IS its roots. It also attracts players that want a simple, straightforward, direct healer. People that want a complex healer play AST or SCH, and people wanting an indirect take on healing play SGE. Recall ARR WHM had all of one oGCD heal (Benediction), five DPS buttons (Stone, Stone 2, Aero, Aero 2, and Holy; this is the EXACT SAME NUMBER of DPS buttons it has today - Glare, Dia, Assize, Misery, and Holy, with three of them doing the same thing [Glare, Dia, Holy] as Stone 2, Aero, and Holy; replace Aero 2 with Misery and that's what we have today). It always has been this way, more or less.

*Okay, you can argue Fluid Aura, but you couldn't use that in many encounters if it would screw with tank positioning, and I would contrast that by noting that Stone 1 wasn't used in most cases once you had Stone 2 unless you SPECIFICALLY wanted to use it just once to inflict Heavy. So even there we can add one while minusing one and come out in basically the same place overall.

But not let's pretend that every WHM player plays WHM simply because it's simple. Are we to just forget, for instance, that it's the literal only healer one can start as or that healing gear in this game is very clearly styled towards the same motifs that WHM most centrally houses?

Another worthwhile argument.

But are we going to pretend that every AST, SCH, and SGE wants a complex kit? We could just note that all healers playing healers today at least find the current kits acceptable enough to play them and, based on that, reject ANY changes.

There ARE going to be losers with any change we make. If we make all the healers more complex, EVERYONE who likes simple loses. If we leave healers as they are, EVERYONE who likes complex loses. If we change some Jobs to be more complex while leaving some simple, people on the complex Jobs that like simple are losing and people on the simple Jobs that like complex are losing.

BUT, by making some simple and some complex, people at least have OPTIONS.

If we leave all healers as they are today, you have no options for a complex healer, do you? Is that fun to you? You can gravitate to AST or SCH, but they aren't scratching that itch for you in terms of TRUE complexity. So you're suffering because you have no option at all.

If we made just ONE healer, say SCH, highly complex, you'd have AT LEAST ONE option. Maybe you don't like SCH's aesthetic, but if you're farming Savage and bored on WHM, AST, and SGE, you'd at least have the option of playing higher skill ceiling SCH and not being bored. You would have the CHOICE between playing what you aesthetically like (I'm assuming WHM for the sake of argument here) OR what keeps you engaged and not-bored (this hypothetical highly complex SCH)

And that's what I want you to have. I want you to have that choice. To have that option. To have a healer that YOU can enjoy playing. Because I want you to enjoy the game and role that you're wanting to play. Because I want you and everyone else to be at least somewhat happy.

...but you aren't in the present game because you don't have that CHOICE. You're forced into simple gameplay. So you just pick the aesthetic you like the best and try to grin and bear it, while being unhappy, or at least, not very content.

I don't want that for you, which is why I want you to have the option for a complex healer or two or THREE.

But the problem comes when nothing is enough for you but having EVERYTHING. Where someone offers you a Lamborghini because they can tell you're unhappy with your beat up pickup, but you refuse and insist that we give you a Lambo AND a Porsche AND a Viper and a McLaren and if we don't give you ALL OF THOSE and outlaw beat up pickups so EVERYONE must drive one of those cars and ONLY those cars, we're uncultured swine who are trying to make you miserable.

Because then you're robbing the option from people who DON'T want that.

I don't want complex healers. But my favorite healer is SCH. But if we're going to make some healers complex, I understand SCH would be one of those. It's the natural choice. The class fantasy is already there with the educated galaxy brain academic aesthetic, the kit is already there with various innerworkings, complexity, jank, clunk, and nuance, and it's just a natural fit.

That would mean I would lose the Job I like best, but I'm willing to give that up so people like you can be happy. All I ask is that ONE Job be one that I can play on and be happy.

...and you would deny me even that. Like the boy in the book "The Giving Tree" (a book that ALWAYS disturbed me as a kid), just taking and coming back and asking for more and more until there's nothing left to give and anyone who doesn't like what you like has no place.

Do you not see how that's a bad thing?