The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Renathras]

The reason WHM is non-Meta is because of YEARS of being shafted and people just accepted for the most part.

No, it's not really that. WHM hasn't always been shafted, per se. WHM in ShB was one of the stronger healer options in vacuum. The problem is it continues to not have buffs in a game where the meta is always chasing buffs. You can see a similar situation with MCH. In a vacuum, MCH was fine. In an average party, a skilled MCH would bring more DPS than a DNC or BRD's buffs would. But the meta said it was trash anyway. And so how do they (finally) fix it? Boost its damage (a 3rd time) but also giving it a...mitigation. And I don't mean this as a slight, as the community collectively seems to think MCH having Feiddle is actually a huge deal and seem to prize it as the utility MCH needed.

So it doesn't even have to be damage buffs/utility NECESSARILY. It just has to be strong if its not. Healers could also be balanced based on mitigation vs buffs, but they aren't. The lowest mitigation Healer (WHM) is also the one with no party buffs. The highest mitigation one also has a strong party buff (SCH) which is why it is guaranteed a spot. Then we have AST with buffs (and some mitigation) and SCH with mitigation, and it's easy to see why WHM is out in the cold.

I guess it depends on how you define "shafted", but WHM is okay in terms of functional. SB I would consider shafted. EW I consider lacking. And it's not lacking in vacuum. It's lacking compared to all the other healers having buffs (AST), mitigation (SGE), or both (SCH).

In ARR, WHM was fine and accepted as the "main" healer in parties.

In HW, AST was total garbage on release and took several buff passes to get it to "be good', and for most of its existence, there was always a "great" and "meh" AST spec. In ShB, for example, Diurnal was considered pretty good and preferable to Nocturnal.

In SB, WHM was total garbage because the Lily system sucked buns and the game was shifting hard against GCD heals and WHM didn't have oGCD heals to really speak of to cover that gap. ShB turned this around with Lilies as a stand in straddling oGCD and GCD heals effectively for WHM, and SCH was clunky enough many people didn't play it. But the bigger reason ShB worked and EW didn't is because...


...EW screwed the pooch with the 2 min meta. It strongly forced buff synergy as optimal play. In ShB, because buffs were all over the place and some comps legitimately didn't have buffs to speak of to bring, and so damage was more normalized. That's why PLD worked in ShB and not in EW. It's also why WHM's consistent and higher personal damage worked. The second problem is that SGE was added. nAST was a second Barrier healer, but still did low personal DPS. But SGE roughly matches WHM in damage output, while bringing more mitigation and almost as much healing to the table. Without SGE, the meta right now would be WHM/SCH for prog and SCH/dAST for farm, and possibly solo WHM for solo healing. Instead, it's SCH/SGE for prog and SCH/AST for farm, and either AST (high end groups, AST buffs >>> WHM's personal damage) or SGE for solo healing as both can do it just fine.

So in EW, it's a combination of the 2 min meta making non-buff Jobs, non-burst Jobs (sustained/smoothed damage) less desired, and a healing competitor was added that does comparable damage to WHM while also providing comparable healing with more utility (SGE) while its existing direct competitor (AST)'s healing was buffed to essentially match WHM's anyway.

The problem with WHM isn't that it's bad or "worse", it's that the 2 min meta has force shifted the game to a specific set of abilities being highly desired, a second set being somewhat desired, and WHM hasn't been given either while it's competitors were largely given both.

Yet Macrocosmos completely invalidating certain raid mechanics is perfectly fine (heavy /s)

One. And they went out of their way not to make another like that in the next tier (not to mention Lilybell and Panhaima have similar outcomes), and that is nothing compared to Critlospread LB3 cheese.

It's worth noting that the only shields that can't stack are barrier healer GCD shields.

Oh, I don't disagree with you - this is another reason Barrier Healers are OP right now. I meant that's the entire reason they were skittish about that for a while. Before completely forgetting they were skittish about it. I feel like it was KIND of not intended, since if they didn't care they wouldn't have made it where shields didn't stack. They did that originally to prevent nAST and SCH shield stacks, and then kept that tradition with SGE. When Seraph was added, it was a big deal as a special CD because they stacked, but now everyone and their dog (except WHM) has a party shield. Hell, PLD and WAR both do! It's one of those "Here's a cool special thing, doesn't it feel awesome to use?!" "Oh, crap, we've given you so many, they feel normal to use! Well, guess we'll just keep doing that since it's normal now." XD

It's kind of like the automatic Crit Direct Hit stuff. Felt amazing when you had one or two, but then it became normal AND required reworking other skills and stat boosts because of how they upended the optimal builds and stuff.

It's a lot of stuff like that where they need to really either turn back the clock on healers or go in a different direction or split them or something. But it makes the Pure/Barrier split a laughable failure. I feel like next expansion, Pure/Barrier will be like Main Tank/Off Tank was from ShB.

Context matters. Negating the Damage Down in E10S for the wall-orbs (for uptime) is clearly cheese and not intended. Negating the Ifrit KB via shielding is memes, because it's not a threat, just a mild inconvenience. Negating the same Ifrit KB, but in UWU, is the intended strategy for the fight. It's 'cheesing the mechanics' only because the design wasn't made with it in mind. But if it WAS made with it in mind, then it's no longer cheese. It's the intended solution. There may need to be a clear indication that 'hey if you have a shield up for this mechanic, you can negate it/not get a debuff/it's a good idea to' for newer players to understand the concept, but maybe not. After all, how many people completely ignore all the interject-able casts in the game

Accurate.

Fair enough. I think they intend KB Immunities to be used on those "intended" ones, though. Generally. Ultimates are kind of weird in that they are their own animal, but not something we can base the rest of the game (including Job mechs) around, really.

Yeah I keep telling some of my FC mates that the healer role is very "situational". Even doing the same fight is gonna be different depending on the players in the party. Take day 1 alliance raid. The new one recently stirred the community some because some groups breezed through the content while other groups really put up a struggle. Thus healers work very different in those two types of groups, and its the same across the board with all content. I don't EVER expect a healer to do a complicating DPS rotation while they are in a very high maintenance group. I've already got hounded by some statics to do more damage while they still make mistakes in savage content. Its almost like you can't win as a healer, so the feedback is not helping at times.

Mhm. Agreed.