The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

So, like Resto Druid or Disc Priest, the reason it'd be 'an advantage' is the gameplay feel. Setting up your HOTs on Resto for the big raidwide damage HPS check thing, then hitting that Flourish to double their output and watching the HPS bars just shoot up (especially with how HOTs tick way more often in WOW anyway) is satisfying to see.

Right, but again -- just very simply, unless playing with a static group of friends, parties don't take class/job/spec/profession X just because something about X especially appeals to its player, since each of the alternatives likewise comes with another player to whom the job is probably about equally attractive (assuming balance / no notoriously unfun-but-overpowered choice, etc.). Barriers and pure healers were never sold as a difference in gameplay (since a pure healer can feel as different from another pure healer as from a barrier healer) but rather in what they uniquely provide to the party.

As such, I feel like design has to accommodate both parts if we're looking for true job diversity, let alone in terms of alignments that would replace the Barrier/Pure dichotomy. I'd agree that the difference in means is ultimately more important, but if the means aren't allowed to differ enough to create unique features, too, that's a pretty tight constraint, which then holds back that mission; but if those features form and differentiate themselves only in unchecked/haphazard manner, we're very likely to simply end up with some being outright better than others, so we probably ought to in some cases jump ahead to a particular featural goal that the means seems to lend themselves towards and make sure that organic design still adds up to parity. That bridge between means and features shouldn't feel reductive, but the end result relevant to compositional choice (rather than just whom one most wants to main generally) needs attention, too.

I realize that may sound a little bit opposite to what I said to Renathras earlier, so let me point out the threshold I think is key. Organic design is good -- really good. Whatever the theme seems to want, it should expand into. But theme is also contextual, and composition is based out around features, not how it feels to arrive at them. That means we do need to make sure the end-results of those jobs will feel roughly balanced to those working alongside those jobs, as well, which may take some focusing a little bit more on certain branches of those themes and a little less on others with an aim at those end-goals. That does not mean we should template, or fixate on certain end-goals while still in the earlyish design process of maximizing the fun of a given theme gameplay-wise, but we do have to look at how these choices fit in among others.

If we want to make the relationship between pure healer and barrier healer more distinct and meaningful, a hurdle you have to deal with is ensuring both feel good during 4-man content, especially if Criterion is going to be a thing.

Are there really any novel challenges to pure/barrier balance likely to arise from 4-manning, though? I would think the only issue 4-manning has would be the undervaluing of AoE heals if AoEs were actually balanced for 8-mans (but, instead they're already balanced for 4-man and therefore just so overpowered in 8-mans as to essentially wipe out most spot-healing).

The idea of having pure healers have the ability to burst heal while barrier healers can't, and barrier healers have the ability to mitigate but pure healers can't, and the two are meant to cover one another could work in theory.

Which... sounds(?) fine, if only the situations actually allowed for it... and if it wouldn't have such an adverse effect on queues in the case that these things were actually needed (demanding sub-role matchmaking), rather than simply capable of smoothing things out. (Granted, come to think of it, multi-job queuing --or the ability to swap jobs out of combat even in instances if in certain conditions-- would fix that issue, among others, too.)

When I say opportunity cost, it should be a cost of DPS uptime. In other words, in order for SCH or SGE to burst heal, they have no choice but to stop attacking, and spend the next couple GCDs using their clutch burst button. The same is true inversely with pure healers and mitigation/barrier tools.

Sounds fine, even if a bit... lackluster, I guess? Granted, any argument against that would depend on a context in which the game isn't 99.9% centered on just total damage doable over {fight length}.