The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[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!