The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

If someone is still only 3 feet tall (1 meter) at maturity, it's unfortunate, but they will not have a career in the NBA. They can however take a ball out to their neighbourhood court or their driveway and shoot some hoops, given that they have legs and arms.

If a healer just wants to heal use a single dot and their aoe DPS skill at 90, if no one is dying they'll likely be fine in normal content. However that doesn't mean that all of the healer roles should be limited to that for the sake of those people who want simple roles that will not even permit for the possibility of multi-tasking /more complex decision making. We aren't proposing that it is mandated, we are allowing for growth in the jobs.

Wait, are we talking about swimming pools or basketball now?

EDIT: Also, who said "all ... healer (Jobs?) should be limited to that"?

I've literally said to change three of the 4 healer Jobs. How is saying "3 should be different from now" saying "all 4 should be the same as now"? Those are incompatible statements...

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Also, happy patch day, everyone! (Patch notes are now out! \o/ Going to give those a read. Later folks. o/)

[IDontPetLalas]

Wait, are we talking about swimming pools or basketball now?

EDIT: Also, who said "all ... healer (Jobs?) should be limited to that"?

I've literally said to change three of the 4 healer Jobs. How is saying "3 should be different from now" saying "all 4 should be the same as now"? Those are incompatible statements...

.

Also, happy patch day, everyone! (Patch notes are now out! \o/ Going to give those a read. Later folks. o/)

Allow me to simplify further. Which of the jobs would be the " I really only want a basic simple healer job"? Now, how would you explain your choice to someone if that was their main, how would explain why one of the other healers wasn't selected? What would you tell them to do- pick of the other healers? What if they didn't want to switch?
This is the type of potential issues that you open up and I don't see a good or necessary reason to do so.

[Renathras]

ForesakenRoe - I was talking about EW.

SAMs are not being blacklisted from parties in EW despite them having a different level of complexity from NINs and MNKs. CLEARLY Jobs do not need to be equally complex in order to earn party spots. That was the point I was making. They just need to do comparable damage OR have some ridiculously good utility that makes up for reduced damage.

And yeah, I'm kinda done with this discussion as we've all said what we're going to and reached a stalemate of not convincing anyone of anything, so this will probably be my last post for a bit.

But so you know, I don't care a whit about parses. There are reasons I don't run a parser. The TOS is one, but another is I genuinely don't care about them. So it's not relevant to our conversation.

ALSO: If you're going to make arguments for me, then I see no reason to post. This is like the 5th time you've outright ignored me replying to you saying "You're saying X" with "No, I'm not saying X", and I'm tired of telling you you're lying about what I'm saying. When you say "So you're saying..." and someone outright tells you "No, that's not what I'm saying", it's very rude to say "No, that's totally what you're saying, even though you're saying it's not and you've explained why it's not."

VERY rude.

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Allow me to simplify further. Which of the jobs would be the " I really only want a basic simple healer job"? Now, how would you explain your choice to someone if that was their main, how would explain why one of the other healers wasn't selected? What would you tell them to do- pick of the other healers? What if they didn't want to switch?
This is the type of potential issues that you open up and I don't see a good or necessary reason to do so.

Well...

1) ...I'd point out the alternative was no Jobs being changed at all so they'd all still have the EW rotations. That is the alternative. You guys seem to think the default position is the change you're proposing. It's not. The default position is for the game to stay as it is today. THAT is the default.

2) ...I'd note that any one of the healers could have been the one left alone, but the one that ends up being left alone would likely be the logical choice. For example, if it's WHM, it makes sense for it to be the simple one. It's always been the simple one, so that's the existing precedent. It's the one that starts at the lowest level, so it makes sense that most players' first healer would be the one easy to play. It's also the one that has a working GCD heal model right now (with Lilies; the other three actively avoid pressing any GCD heal unless they're forced to do so). Collectively, these make it the logical choice. An alternative would be SGE. A bit less logical (Kardia existing means that SGE having an actual damage rotation makes logical sense since said rotation results in healing), but probably the second best option for the simple healer. Starting at a higher level would mean players who don't have a healer but want to pick one up would logically reach for it, meaning it being a simple model does have some merit. And the other two options, AST with Cards and buffs and SCH with pet management and even more oGCDs, make less sense. SGE would need to be redesigned so its GCD heals were more powerful, though, but we could do that.

3) ...I'd ask them which they find more important, the aesthetic or the playstyle. And then I'd say pick the one that has that. Understand, I'd be doing the same thing. The healer I like the aesthetic of the most is SCH, but under this change, I'd likely end up playing the other three instead (right now I play all three other than AST). So this is a case of "I'm not asking you to do something I wouldn't be doing myself". Right now I play WHM, SCH, and SGE. Under this change, I'd probably end up just playing WHM and SGE, or possibly just one of those, losing one (or two) of my own healers.

4) ...then no one's forcing them to. They can keep playing the Job they play today. Remember that the 1 being left alone is the 1 being left alone, meaning if they are playing it right now, they'd be no worse off than they are right now other than being jealous of other people, I guess.

5) ...yes, these are potential issues you open up. What you're ignoring is all the issues you would open up by changing all four healers.

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What do YOU tell the people who want a basic healer that their main isn't basic anymore?

How do you explain to them that none of the healers are so they have no way to enjoy the game anymore?

What do you tell them to do - quit healing? Quit the game?

What if they don't want to quit? What if they don't want to do the damage? Now you're going to tell them they don't get to clear content and they don't, in your mind, deserve to clear the content?

What happens when PF can't find healers anymore? What happens when healers aren't in DF because so many people quit healing?

Those are all potential issues you open up that I don't see a good or necessary reason to do so.

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You seem to argue your idea to change all 4 healers wouldn't alienate anyone (or would only alienate a small amount of people that's irrelevant) when there's zero support for that position. You also seem to argue that this wouldn't have huge ramifications and that this is the default position that anyone who doesn't like it has to argue against and compromise with, rather than your proposal being the new thing and the current situation being the default you must compromise with.

I'm even offering you a compromise that would do so and give you 3 out of 4 things that you're asking for. Which, in the real world, is a pretty good compromise in your favor...

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At the end of the day...none of us are going to convince the other of anything.

All I'm saying is my proposal is the one that would make the most people happy, require the least unhappy people, require the least change, the least alienation, and would allow everyone to be at least somewhat happy. Kinda like ranked choice voting where you get your second pick and I get my third pick. No one's perfectly happy, but everyone has something they can be content they got from the bargain.

Given the alternative is for healers to remain exactly as they are today, it's a deal that people should be jumping on rather than attacking. Considering the alternative is you get 0/nothing, NOT that you get 4/everything.

[ForsakenRoe]

What I don't understand is the compelling reason that ALL the healers need to be 2m deep. Some of us are only 1.5m tall. Some people are only 0.6m tall. What about those people?

I'm not asking for them all to be 2m deep, I'm asking for them to all be swimming pools with ranging depths from 'kiddie pool' to '2m deep for able swimmers', and the players can choose how far towards the deep end they want to go. But your solution is to have 3 'proper swimming pool' healers, and one 'inflatable pool in the back yard' healer with WHM. All that's going to do is cause the players who perceive themselves to be more 'hardcore' to ostracize any and all who play the 'healer for dummies', as was the case with WHM in SB. 'Why play WHM when AST heal same but better damage contribution?'

Reason why someone might want to play a healer that has 3 DOTs to juggle instead of one 30s one as we have now might be, and stay with me on this cos it's gonna be a shocker, they like to be engaged while playing the game. Guess I'll take a turn at coming up with stupid extremes to illustrate a point. Imagine if, instead of SMN doing the primal skills like Ruby Rite or Slipstream or whatever, all that potency was baked into the 'summon demi-X' spell. All 4 MountainBusters and Topaz Thingys are all compiled into Titan summon, so SMN's rotation becomes 'summon Demi, afk for 20s, summon next'. It'd be the same damage output, but so so much more boring to play. Same goes for any class. Some people enjoy pressing 5 buttons to get the same output as a different class that only has to press 2. Some people enjoy the OGCD bombsite of DRK's 2min window, or GNB's Continuationfest, compared to WAR. But we don't need to hold all our resources on DRK, or keep our No Mercy and Gnashing Fang aligned on GNB, when our 'endgame content' is Troia. Because there, it does not matter what we press, or how suboptimally we play, as long as we don't wipe (and wiping is kinda difficult now, really). Besides, look how many people advocate keeping Energy Drain around, even though it's potency has been hobbled over and over. And when I've asked them in the past how low they'd accept it going, some have said 'if it still has potency, I want it kept'. Even ONE potency, because even at one single potency point, it offers that player a form of complexity to play around, a way to express their skill, even if it's completely outshone by crit variance.

I reckon I could clear P8S now as AST without playing a single card, due to gearing and having more ILVL than week 1. Does this mean we should delete cards entirely, because they're only something to worry about optimizing during the first few weeks of prog?

And eh, Cata, the expansion where they jacked healing throughput requirements through the roof, causing a mass exodus of healer mains from the role as they could not keep up with the sudden extra HPS requirements, having grown accustomed to the ez-breezy ride through Wrath Heroics a few months before? Where have I heard that situation unfolding recently...? But yeh, this once again is another data point to my theory: people got the idea of 'healers only heal' from some specific point, and haven't let go since. I assumed Cata or Mists, and this correlates. But there's evidence in earlier-WOW that healers were intended to do damage (wanding is manacost-free, Judgement of Wisdom, Druid Clearcasting triggering off of melee in Vanilla, Loatheb in Naxx as a bossfight), and retail is... retail, M+ and all that. So it's just this one, 2-4 year window of time, in one MMO (admittedly the biggest one on the market) that I guess everyone is accepting as 'the gold standard for Healer role design', despite A: the majority of this playerbase being allergic to anything even tangentially related to WOW, and B: WOW itself having moved past that design. Or is that why people want to have 'healers only heal', because WOW does expect some DPS from healers (and the players are vocal enough to tell you, with plenty of venom in their tone), so we must have FFXIV healers 'only heal' because WOW bad?

If the healers healed in different ways to each other, ie: Druid's HOT focus, Paladin's melee based builder/spender focus (which would actually have zero obstacles to implementation, now that every boss's arse takes up 75% of the arena), Disc's Disc-ing, then maybe the damage kit homogenization would be a tiny bit more palatable. Tiny bit. But even the healing side is horrendously homogenized, because I guess if Hypothetical Healer can't look at their kit and recognize 'ah this SGE skill, Prognosis, it like Medica, me spam' they just bluescreen and let the party die?

[Shurrikhan]

If it does the same damage, it wouldn't be 'griefing".

Except, in practice, they don't. If one has the same maximum performance as another, but also has almost nothing that can go wrong compared to the other, in practice their actual performance will be higher until such time as the given player makes zero mistakes. They'd be balanced for the highest end... at the expense of freedom of job choice for everyone else.

Even in FFXIV, other than healers and arguably ranged physical, the other roles/subroles have a gradient, even if some wish to claim it's small.

Yes, and look at what that costs the role. Their damage is as truncated as their skill ceiling. And if they weren't, they'd then be pushing all others out because why would anyone optimize BLM when they could just combo-roll-and-hit-on-CD on MCH for the very same damage. Why would either be a good thing?

...maybe you missed the in Cataclysm part. Druids in current, to my knowledge, have two flavors, Feral for Mythic and Balance for Raids (I haven't played WoW since Legion, but I try to read up on it in Icy Veins from time to time), with the later seeming to play a lot like FFXIV WHM with an added DoT (that may be AOE, I think Sunfire is AOE now...?)

Then your knowledge is, well, off. Or at least hyperbolic. (More below, expandable.)

Feral has higher mids but lower peaks and lower minimums than Balance in raid, outperforming it in slightly more fights but to lower overall performance. Neither is a set "raid" spec over the other except by past tradition (of, all else being equal, taking ranged over melee in order not to crowd mechanics).

They're also neck and neck in Mythic+, with Balance outnumbering Feral for parses. (Why? Probably because Balance has pretty much always been a more played spec than Feral. Who can really argue against a giant moon-chucking chicken, after all?)

And no part of that has to do with one being necessarily more complex or damage-focused than the other (both can take very simple or relative complex builds).

That is, can you give me a reason all four healers NEED to be the deep end of the pool?

Because there is no "deep end" in isolation, only how far the pool goes. No one's asking for an obscure healer that'd require a treatise to even get started with.

You've been seemingly suggesting we diversify healers by truncating what they each have access to. A larger group in this thread would appear to prefer instead to simply build a whole, large pool --from shallow to deep-- and let players go as far as they personally feel is worthwhile.

[ForsakenRoe]

Feral has higher mids but lower peaks and lower minimums than Balance in raid, outperforming it in slightly more fights but to lower overall performance. Neither is a set "raid" spec over the other except by past tradition (of, all else being equal, taking ranged over melee in order not to crowd mechanics).

Reason I mentioned Feral and Balance was not as the actual specs, but as skillsets that Resto can dip into and 'do damage as a healer'. Though, in several parts of the past Feral has been horrendously ignored/forgotten about, lacking cohesiveness, throughput, and general care for the design. Despite these dark times, some players stuck with it, because they loved the class, despite Rogue being easier or having more DPS or whatever.

I'll reword what I'm trying to convey, once again: Ren, you are advocating for 3 healers to be 'swimming pool' and one to be 'inflatable backyard pool'. I am saying that by doing this, you leave that one healer (WHM) stuck in a situation where, once a player feels they have experienced the depth of the class (which will happen sooner, due to less overall depth, backyard pool and all that), they are forced, by your design, to either reroll (requiring they level a whole other class) or just put up and shut up that they're on the 'simple healer'. I'm saying that all four healers should be 'swimming pool' ,and that I have confidence that the playerbase will swim at the depth level they find comfortable. Shallow end for less able swimmers/learners, deeper end for able swimmers, sort of middleish for 'people who are starting to get good at swimming, but still shallow enough to set their feet down on solid ground if panic sets in'. I don't get how this isn't getting through, it's like you read 'deep end' and just assume I want to throw them all into the ocean to let them drown

As for timespans, yeh I'll confess I never played EQ or read anything about it beyond it's age, and that some WOW devs were from top EQ guilds. BUT, I can also link this: World first Gordias, now I'm pretty tired, eyes blurry etc, but I'm pretty sure that's Aero 3 and Stone 3 being cast. And here's WF Deltascape for comparison.So yeh, 'as late as SB' might have been true for like, your friend circle or something, but the rest of the game was busy pumping DPS and struggling to keep up with the horrendous MP costs WHM had on Stone back then

As to the earlier in its history: Wanding was autoattack. It wasn't an active button you pressed. That'd be like if in FFXIV a WHM right-clicked the boss and, when not casting heals, un-actively twacked them with their staffs. Not exactly the gameplay you're asking for

Since Ruin and Ruin 2 were equal potency back then (with R2 being more MP hungry), some SCHs did actually do that, bonk enemies with their book for bonus damage. Here's a thread on reddit on the subject that took almost zero time to find. Note that since Broil was added in HW, rendering the 'equal potency R1/R2' thing moot, this means that the idea was occuring during ARR. OP of the thread also mentions FCOB by name, if you prefer to find out that way

I'm just here to object to the evergreen, ceaseless call for the "perfect" solution to terrible design in the healer role: lol just designate WHM as the one that's the least engaging and sucks and make the other three more engaging, more powerful, or both more engaging and more powerful. Easy! If you object to it, you're just a one-trick healer who refuses to change to a different job; MY favorite job gets fixed in this scenario, so go off and play DPS or something if you don't like it.

On that we agree at least. Why does WHM seem to always get designated as the 'depth of a puddle' healer? Because it's the only one that starts at level 1? DH in WOW started at 98 out of 110, and it was unbelievably newplayer friendly!

[Renathras]

I think the problem here is your perception of my perception. And also how you're using your perception as agreed upon objective positions. For example, "proper" swimming pools. You seem to want all the pools to have the same variable depths while I'm more interested in having a kid's pool, a backyard pool, an in-ground pool, and an olympic pool so people can swim in whichever one meets their needs.

Aside: The reason WHM was ostracized in SB had nothing to do with it being "healer for dummies". It was because Lilies were ridiculously bad and the Job was undertuned vs SCH and dAST. WHM was still the easiest healer in ShB but was brought to many many MANY clears and generally accepted as a good choice for healer in a lot of content. As you note, it was AST dealing better damage contribution, not WHM being easier, that was the problem. This is, btw, an argument for why the healers should NOT do higher damage based on skill or kit...

Reason why someone might want to play...

I don't understand who you're arguing against.

Did I not already say I can see why people would want to play healers with more damage buttons?

Did I not already suggest that three healers be changed to have more damage buttons?

I've already acknowledged this argument, why are you making it as if it were a counter to some point that I'm not arguing?


ALSO:

"they like to be engaged while playing the game"

So that means they don't need to do more damage, right? The DoTs can do the exact same potency as their filler spam spell and they'll still be happy because they're "more engaged", right? If them being more engaged by having more damage buttons is what makes them happy, then the damage of those buttons should be irrelevant as long as they aren't a DPS loss to use. I have a feeling that this isn't the actual answer. There's a curious principle in Economics. If you doubled the prices of everything but doubled someone's wages, the person should be no happier. They can only buy the exact same amount they could before. But, oddly, people ARE happier. Something about the larger number. While it seems that it shouldn't matter. Likewise, if people wanted to be more engaged, if that was all it took to make them happy, we could add dozens of DPS buttons that all did the same damage and they could be "more engaged". But the fact is, they wouldn't be, for...I think obvious reasons. While some few would like more buttons, many would see them as meaningless and pointless.

Unless, again, using them makes a large enough change to be noticeable. But once that happens, we again have the problem of it affecting people and reducing clears of content for people following their preferred playstyle, which they are allowed to do in the game right now as it is live (well, when the servers come back up), and thus is taking something away from people (actual content) in exchange for making some other people feel a bit "more engaged". This seems like a net loss for the community. Especially since there's an entirely workable counter that lets both get what they want.

Your SMN extreme doesn't work. WHM doesn't cast Dia then go afk for 30 seconds. It'd be more like if you hit your Primal summon that does 2x the damage of your <Elemental> Ruin 3, then you chain casted Ruin 3 for 20 seconds until the next Demi. And honestly, there are people that would be perfectly fine with that (and some that argue that's more or less all SMN is already...)

And eh, Cata...

lol, yeah, Cata's healing model sucked overall. Mists was the golden era for WoW, honestly. It was probably the best balanced and most fun expansion in WoW's history to play and heal. Pity so many people didn't like the "Kung Fu Panda" aesthetic (even though Pandaren predate KFP), as the expansion overall was one of the best in the game's history. The big problem was their class and encounter designers didn't get the same memo. The class designers were told that Cata healing was going to use a "triage model" where damage came in steady and healers were supposed to parse out heals to keep people at healthy levels but not necessarily 100% all the time. Then the encounter designers didn't get that memo, and so made encounters as big spike damage as Wrath. This resulted in healers HAVING to use their big expensive and mana inefficient heals just to survive because their healing kits were changed from Wrath healing so they didn't have the tools to do their basic job anymore. Combined with people forgetting they had crowd control abilities in dungeons and were supposed to use them again like BC, it created the perfect storm.

As to the earlier in its history: Wanding was autoattack. It wasn't an active button you pressed. That'd be like if in FFXIV a WHM right-clicked the boss and, when not casting heals, un-actively twacked them with their staffs. Not exactly the gameplay you're asking for (nor I, for that matter). Vanilla healers were actively discouraged from dpsing. And some from healing. (PLDs were brought for their buffs and Druids for Innevation, I think the name of it is?) Or, in some cases, from even entering combat (Paladins). Druids were brought to Vanilla raids to give mana to the Holy Priests, whose sole job was healing because mana economy kind of sucked. The reason healers didn't damage was because they couldn't without being unable to heal. There weren't massive mana free heals like there are now in WoW, so if you went oom, your tank died, and that meant you failed at your role. Also, healer damage spells were garbage at the time while costing stupidly high mana, and worse, agro management was very much an issue, and heals already generated a lot of agro, meaning doing additional damage risked turning the boss on the healer (and likely cleaving the raid)

It also wasn't just WoW. And it wasn't for a very short time (Holy Paladins spammed one button (Holy Light) for two solid expansions!) Everquest did this (including with sitting, called "meditating", during the fight to gain mana back. Given EQ massive bosses could take literal hours to kill...) EQ2 did this some. LotRO did this some, etc. It was a staple of MMOs from their inception to the 2010s that healers were supposed to heal and only deal damage tangentially. Even in FFXIV 1.0 this was true, as well as most of 2.X. For WHM, this was true as late as SB, and even in ShB/EW they use GCDs for healing (but have enough oGCDs now to largely limit it to just Lily spells)

It wasn't "just this one, 2-4 year window of time, in one MMO".

...though that doesn't matter at all: What matters is that it's what some players want. It's irrelevant why they want it.

Some people enjoy pressing 5 buttons to get the same output...

Who are you trying to convince here? I've already said such people exist, which is why I think healers should be like tanks with a simple option and then three flavors of more complex. I'm not sure why you're posting in reply to me when the points you're raising are ones I've already stated I agree with and are the basis of my proposal. Did you mean to quote Shurrikhan? Shurrikan has argued against some of these points.

[Semirhage]

I'm just here to object to the evergreen, ceaseless call for the "perfect" solution to terrible design in the healer role: lol just designate WHM as the one that's the least engaging and sucks and make the other three more engaging, more powerful, or both more engaging and more powerful. Easy! If you object to it, you're just a one-trick healer who refuses to change to a different job; MY favorite job gets fixed in this scenario, so go off and play DPS or something if you don't like it.

[Renathras]

I'm just here to object to the evergreen, ceaseless call for the "perfect" solution to terrible design in the healer role: lol just designate WHM as the one that's the least engaging and sucks and make the other three more engaging, more powerful, or both more engaging and more powerful. Easy! If you object to it, you're just a one-trick healer who refuses to change to a different job; MY favorite job gets fixed in this scenario, so go off and play DPS or something if you don't like it.

Honestly, it doesn't even have to be WHM. It could be SGE, or even AST. And no one's asking for the other three to be "more powerful" except the people saying that anything not as complex should be nerfed by comparison. Which isn't any of the people proposing the "change 3" idea.

Everyone has to sacrifice to reach a compromise. Changing all four forces a ton of players to sacrifice either their playstyle or content (or both) for no gain at all to them. Changing 3 is the give and take where everyone sacrifices something but also gains something. Which is what a compromise should be.

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Yes, and look at what that costs the role."

What do you mean? Melee have a gradient. That's bad? Casters have a gradient and all of them are useful. Tanks have a gradient, the problem is PLD does crap damage and has a missing mitigation (both of which are presumably the target of the changes in 6.3). SAM's aren't being blacklisted from parties. NINs aren't being blacklisted from parties. A good BLM is always welcome in parties because they legitimately are worth bringing. Having variations in complexity doesn't seem to be a problem in any of the other roles. The only problem comes if some Jobs do significantly less damage overall than others. Like MCH doing less (party) than DNC/BRD or PLD doing less than the other three tanks. This is only acceptable if they have tremendous utility (Verraise for example) to make up for it.

On Druids: So Feral is even less played as a subspect? Well, guess that makes my point for me, then. I thought it at least had a niche it was better in.

Looking at the two builds, though, Balance seemed more simple to me when I read about it in Shadowlands. But it's hard to say without playing it, I suppose.

Because there is no "deep end" in isolation

Where did I suggest we truncate healers? I suggested we expand three healers and leave one alone. How is that truncation?

I DID suggest we focus them in different areas, but to do so while expanding them into those areas so that the net area is greater than (or equal to) before, not less than. I'm a bit confused what you think I'm proposing?

Also, where did I say someone was asking for a healer that requires a treatise? I've noted actual number values, such as 6 or 8 damage buttons. Those are concrete things, not some nebulous "it's too hard".

A larger group in this thread...

Note that the official forums make up a tiny fraction of the playerbase, and the independent posters in this thread is/are around 30, which is the absolute minimum N to even try to do something with statistics, and tends to generate poor results. That's also ignoring that not everyone in this thread is in agreement.

...which is a fancy way of saying "this thread" or even "this forum" is not likely representative of the playerbase as a whole.

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EDIT:

Ren, you are advocating for 3 healers to be 'swimming pool' and one to be 'inflatable backyard pool'.

No, I'm not.

I'm advocating for the 4 healers to be normal sized backyard swimming pool (the 3 foot ones), large backyard swimming pool (the 4-5 foot ones), in-ground pool/city pool, and Olympic pool, where 2 and 3 are largely side-grades to each other.

I'm not advocating for anything to be "inflatable backyard pool" nor am I advocating the other 3 be identical.

I'm actually advocating for the exact opposite of that, for the other 3 to also be diverse and distinct from each other.

BUT, I can also link this: World first Gordias, now I'm pretty tired, eyes blurry etc, but I'm pretty sure that's Aero 3 and Stone 3 being cast.

It is, but I can also link you videos of ARR and HW where the WHM isn't casting many damage spells, including 2nd Coil and 3rd Coil. Also, Gordias is LEGENDARY for being overtuned, to the point of breaking guilds, sidelining PLDs and MNKs, and so on. I don't think using a world first Gordias is very indicative of the general raider community, or larger community, at the time. In fact, I just noticed World first, which kind of indicates that was NOT normal at the time for general raiders or the general playerbase. Surely you realize that as well, yes?

I don't think using a World First clear is a good example of the playerbase as a whole. I'm not sure who would think it is.

Since Ruin and Ruin 2...

Once more, I'm confused what you're arguing. Are you now arguing that healer damage be exclusively auto-attacks? Surely not... I mean, I KNOW you aren't, so I'm confused why you're advocating for auto-attack heavy design...? I mean, I guess we could do that (technically optimal RDM play is to do that, I think, as all those little auto-attack damage strikes when Dualcasting add up), but...

[ForsakenRoe]

Everyone has to sacrifice to reach a compromise. Changing all four forces a ton of players to sacrifice either their playstyle or content (or both) for no gain at all to them. Changing 3 is the give and take where everyone sacrifices something but also gains something. Which is what a compromise should be.

SAM's aren't being blacklisted from parties.

On Druids: So Feral is even less played as a subspect? Well, guess that makes my point for me, then. I thought it at least had a niche it was better in.
Looking at the two builds, though, Balance seemed more simple to me when I read about it in Shadowlands. But it's hard to say without playing it, I suppose.

Where did I suggest we truncate healers? I suggested we expand three healers and leave one alone. How is that truncation?

I can't be dealing with this I'm going to bed once I post this, but: Again, if people want to play Glarespam, they could if they had 2 or 20 dots to manage. It's up to SE to balance how much punishment is inflicted on their damage from not using those DOTs.

SAM was locked out of PFs in SB, due to the negative stigma surrounding the average player of the class. Perception matters, and if a class is perceived to be 'super simple', it's likely going to be perceived as 'only people who are bad would play this'. It's not like SB SAM was 'hard' by any measure, but it got locked out all the same.

Feral being played despite having no real niche at certain times, or being behind on damage, or whatever, I don't see how that 'proves your point'. Some people play something because of whatever reason. WHM was not good in SB and everyone knew this, people still played it. DRK was 'griefing' in SB, still went on to get world first in both ultimates. Feral doesn't need to have some specific quantifiable advantage that makes it preferable to Balance. It could literally just be as simple as the player saying 'I don't like casters, I like melee'.

As for 'expand 3', they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so:

healers currently

healers if Ren

healers if me

Red is 'how much skill it requires to keep party alive through content like EX roulette or Treasure Map', Blue is 'how much skill it requires to maximise DPS, such that you'd get rank 1 parse'. See how the red bars, the skill floor, are identical in all 3 pictures, because I don't actually mind Jimmy EXroulette spamming Medica for his 90 tomes each day. What I do mind, is how close the blue bar is to the red, and how close you're insisting on keeping WHM's blue to it's red, for whatever reason