FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[Sebazy]

It is one reason I think this survey (or the participants) are somehow particularly tilted against Healers. In most forums where BRD is talked about (both here and elsewhere), it's almost universally being ragged on. Yet here, it's scoring higher than Healers despite people being more negative on it basically everywhere. Which kinda tells me the survey results are being affected by a bit of sample bias or something.

I mean it couldn't possibly be that healers are just that bad right?

Impossible!

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I find it fascinating that it *must* be bias. Has to be. Sampling or otherwise. No *true* population canvassing could possibly report dislike or boredom toward job design that involves rotting your brain mashing the Glare key six million times over the course of two expansions. It's such a brilliantly-designed set of jobs. No way people could find them boring or poorly-designed. It's got to be the encounter design fooling them into thinking that Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is boring. Has to be. It's. So. Fun.

Surely it must be because healers can’t be bad, right??! /s

L m a o

Very happy and relieved to see a lot of Bard DoT defenders around!!

Not even a main BRD myself but I do really miss the relevancy of BRD’s DoT ticks. I felt this so much when I got into Paradigm Tower as a BRD couple of weeks ago. Back in ShB, I remember spamming Pitch Perfect like crazy while playing Minuet once I got all DoT ticking on both Hangry bosses. It.was.ecstatic!

Not anymore, no more Never experienced pre-ShB BRD but reading old guides/watching old vids makes me think it’ll be my secondary job after my healer main, they looked pretty awesome.

[Renathras]

I mean it couldn't possibly be that healers are just that bad right?

Impossible!

It COULD, but unlikely since there are other Jobs that are consistently ragged on as being REALLY bad AND that people who played the older versions hate aside from SMN that are getting oddly high marks.

Another curiosity to me is that WHM is the second lowest healer and under 5.0 now (after it was discussed how they weren't), but is arguably the best shape it's been in for the game's entire history (if you didn't love Cleric), and has either the most engaging, or second most engaging, GCD rotation (vying for the position with SGE), yet is rated so much lower for...reasons?

I dunno, there's some things that don't add up well. /shrug That's all I'm saying.

Also: This isn't the Healer forum, you can save your dogpile for there.

[Shinkuno]

It COULD, but unlikely since there are other Jobs that are consistently ragged on as being REALLY bad AND that people who played the older versions hate aside from SMN that are getting oddly high marks.

Another curiosity to me is that WHM is the second lowest healer and under 5.0 now (after it was discussed how they weren't), but is arguably the best shape it's been in for the game's entire history (if you didn't love Cleric), and has either the most engaging, or second most engaging, GCD rotation (vying for the position with SGE), yet is rated so much lower for...reasons?

I dunno, there's some things that don't add up well. /shrug That's all I'm saying.

Also: This isn't the Healer forum, you can save your dogpile for there.

You sound like a main healer that cant accept his role is the worst designed healer role in probably the whole mmo genre

[Renathras]

You sound like a main healer that cant accept his role is the worst designed healer role in probably the whole mmo genre

I'm not interested in getting in a tit for tat, and this is General, not Healer subform, so I'd advise against ad hominems in lieu of arguments.

I'm pointing out issues, that's all. Besides, when we started this (the long form survey first), even Ty noted that the results would be biased, particularly against healers. So I'm not pointing out something we didn't already agree was likely.

In fact, if I recall correctly, HE was the one that pointed it out in the first place...

EDIT: Oh, and don't state subjective opinions as fact. They aren't "worst designed" just because you don't like them. Their design is fine, the encounter designs have issues, though, in breaking down the trinity system as a whole...

WHM, for example, is one of the best designed Healers in MMOs IF you like to heal. The encounter design sucks for it since it doesn't really lean into healing, much, though. Now, if you like to damage? Yeah, FFXIV's Healers are all pretty badly designed for that. But that's why we have DPS Jobs, I guess? But WHM nails the fantasy of having powerful and efficient heals to keep your party alive. Put FFXIV's EW WHM into, for example, WoW's 4.1 Troll dungeons (the ones that caused a lot of healers in WoW to quit), for example, for a pretty solid time. Conclusion is: The Healer design isn't bad, much less "worst". But FFXIV's encounter design is becoming problematic with it breaking down the trinity to the point of obsolescence.

Then again they also used to just call the rest Ranged DPS and separate them into 2 subtypes.

Until ShB, I think it was, they only called the Jobs Tank, Healer, and DPS. They didn't split the DPS until ShB, seemingly so they could justify adding DNC. When they first said "We need another 'Ranged Physical DPS'", a lot of the community was confused because they had never made that distinction before and it wasn't listed in the game as distinct.

It’s true that what constitutes as a minor or major rework may differ depending on who you ask, but in general, a “rework” in games defines a fundamental shift in the play style of a class or character. As Roe stated, that does not mean literally nothing is added or removed, because that is never the case. Every expansion, every job is required to include new abilities because if they don’t, there is a fear of backlash.

No rework was meant to imply a normal amount of new actions, and maybe some subtle cleaning up of existing tools. For example, I do not think the removal of Shadowbringers Fluid Aura constitutes as a rework, and I imagine most people would agree. But I think we’re getting in the weeds over the semantics. The point of that question was to see how people felt about how each job’s gameplay feels.

No rework = this job has good gameplay and nothing specific is needed.

Minor rework = there is some clunkiness that needs to be ironed out, but otherwise the job is good.

Major rework = the job has a good concept, but does not feel fun/satisfying/rewarding to play and/or is not functioning properly.

Overhaul = The job is completely failing to deliver on its design and/or job fantasy and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

I wanted to keep each answer short and clear though, which is why I didn’t try to add that much detail to each response option. If it’s too long wordy, it may have gotten ignored.

I feel like that probably SHOULD have been in the original. I would have said No Rework instead of Minor Rework in several cases.

[AnotherPerson]

It COULD, but unlikely since there are other Jobs that are consistently ragged on as being REALLY bad AND that people who played the older versions hate aside from SMN that are getting oddly high marks.

Another curiosity to me is that WHM is the second lowest healer and under 5.0 now (after it was discussed how they weren't), but is arguably the best shape it's been in for the game's entire history (if you didn't love Cleric), and has either the most engaging, or second most engaging, GCD rotation (vying for the position with SGE), yet is rated so much lower for...reasons?

WHM is arguably in the best shape it has been in terms of lily usage, but taking away stuff from WHM consistently has already reduced its gameplay over the years. If it was at one point a 4 and then it dropped to a 2, just because it's in its best state as a 5, doesn't mean it's still good when the bar is up to a 10.

Also, What GCD rotation are you talking about? All WHM has is Glare and Dia. Assuming you're including Afflatus spells, you also have to remember that Afflatus spells fall under conditional usage - You use Afflatus spells to access Misery, but Afflatus spells are ultimately healing, and healing is part of a binary condition where you simply use it when people need healing or to avoid overcapping. There's virtually no thought to be had in it in most cases because of how much excessive healing you have in the first place. It doesn't matter if WHM suddenly has "4 GCD spells" in its rotation, if you're healing when you don't need to, it doesn't feel good. The GCD rotation doesn't feel rewarding and lacks engagement.

SGE barely has a different GCD rotation than WHM in all honesty. They have Dosis and Eukrasian Dosis (Glare / Dia equivalent), and Phlegma every 40 seconds. That's it. Toxikon II is so niche in its usage because it doesn't generate normally (limited to 3 at most if you never have to GCD shield) and doesn't have a purpose outside of double weaves/mobility. Double weaves are also because you want to use your healing skills -- which ultimately puts Toxikon II as a skill for your healing rotation -- which again brings up the previous issue. If you don't need healing, it doesn't actually have a place in your GCD rotation. Pneuma is also in its healing rotation and you don't use it under your GCD rotation every 120 seconds. Ultimately, 2 of a SGE's "GCD skills" are relegated to a binary conditional. In terms of diversity, SGE doesn't have it much better because Phlegma is 2 charges -- so there's a point where you just want to hold both charges when possible to dump it in raid buff windows now that all raid buffs are aligned to 120 seconds. The majority of the time is still spent on Dosis.

What puts SCH arguably above WHM is not due to its GCD rotation, but it's due to its engagement with Energy Drain optimization, as well as a more well-designed toolkit for encounters (mitigation checks only make SCH and SGE feel better). GCD Rotation only matters if there's enough to create a diverse and satisfying gameplay. SCH doesn't have a GCD rotation outside of Broil / Biolysis (Glare / Dia equivalents), but can be rated similarly to the both of the healers above exactly because WHM and SGE's "GCD rotations" doesn't feel as meaningful to its engagement. SCH instead excels at micromanaging excess healing resources they don't need through Energy Drain -- which provides a more meaningful engagement to its gameplay. It's still rated as a 5 out of 10 on average though, and that's no surprise because there's nothing else that's engaging outside of healing (which, again, is not always applicable).

[Sebazy]

Another curiosity to me is that WHM is the second lowest healer and under 5.0 now (after it was discussed how they weren't), but is arguably the best shape it's been in for the game's entire history (if you didn't love Cleric), and has either the most engaging, or second most engaging, GCD rotation (vying for the position with SGE), yet is rated so much lower for...reasons?

I dunno, there's some things that don't add up well. /shrug That's all I'm saying.

Also: This isn't the Healer forum, you can save your dogpile for there.

Key point here, it's the best it's been in terms of balance. Balance and engagement are two very different things.

Two big details that you're ignoring here:

Healer engagement is arguably at the lowest it's ever been in mainstream content. You yourself keep saying that FFXIV's healers can be fixed entirely with changes to content and whilst I don't agree with that (More in a moment), you are at least partially right in that content design is a part of the problem here. Let's lay down some cold numbers here: You keep saying that BarbEX is a good fight that deals loads of damage. I've already clearly demonstrated that it actually deals substantially less damage than RubiEX (Even with the puzzle phases included), but here's what will make your head really spin. BarbEX has roughly the same HPS requirements as Emerald WeaponEX. A trial from last expansion. Go think about that for a second.

Secondly. Hand waving away anyone who so much dares as to claim that FFXIV's healers are poorly designed as subjective is comical. Did you ever touch healing in Swotor? Did you ever touch healing in Warhammer online? Both MMOs had healers who's kits had serious depth, broad utility and massively diverse styles of play with a ton of inter-kit interactions.

WHM, for example, is one of the best designed Healers in MMOs IF you like to heal.

Really? I'd legit expect this comment from Titanmen. A bloated kit full of overpowered abilities that trivialise anything the game is capable of throwing at you short of just oneshotting people doesn't equate to a well designed kit. Go look at E12S part 1. That boss literally throws AoEs every time it so much as sneazes, it takes a spreadsheet masterclass to minimise GCD heal usage on that fight but yet even with all the AoEs, you can just /shrug your shoulders and deal with it with Medica IIs. Thus we've ended up at the point where the only challenge to healing that matters isn't even really a healer check (If you're a WHM at least), it's a mitigation check.

Best designed healers don't make me laugh. You don't know what the F you are talking about.

[Sebazy]

To expand and clarify some of my points above (Sorry, had to head out and missed important details in the process)

Regarding BarbEX. The thing that makes BarbEX a fun fight isn't the incoming damage because it's mathematically demonstrable that it's not actually that high in the grand scheme of things, it just felt that way after ZodiEX which did a lot of nothing, HydaEX which was a soft touch and EndsingerEX being a slowly paced puzzle. Where BarbEX shines is the pacing of the fight. She's winding up her next mechanic whilst the previous one is still resolving. There's relatively little downtime, if you take your eye off the ball for a few GCDs after resolving one mechanic, you've likely missed the start of the next one. It was that pacing and pressure that made mechanics like Knuckledrum feel good.

So yes, content design definitely has a lot of room to improve and even as someone who's been around and on the edge of world prog since ARR, SE's current 'esports friendly' design approach to high end content just feels super strange and at odds with the rest of the game to me. Sudo's designs were so much more organic and less 'by the numbers'. By comparison today's bosses feel like a box ticking exercise. AoE 5 seconds into the fight to remind healers that we care about them? Check.

Next up, expanding on healer kit design:

Look at it this way, take 2 BLMs in a soft 24 man like Aglaia. #1 is an absolute try hard with the talent, experience and knowledge to back it up. #2 has read the tooltips and knows to keep their GCD rolling but doesn't have anything like the same experience or knowledge. The #1 will decisively beat #2 even in this face roll content. This is a big part in why so many think so fondly of the job. You put the effort in, you get a reward out.

Now apply the same to 2 WHMs. #1 is my usual co-healer Fretty, quite literally a top 10 ranked SCH worldwide at his peak, #2 is me, a meme at best, a HPS monster at worst. In casual content like Aglaia I can match him or at the very least run him damn close. This isn't because I'm good and it's not entirely the fault of the content because after all, there's a clear gap between the BLMs. The problem is that as long as I'm mashing keys, it's very hard to press the wrong one without doing something REALLY stupid as a healer. The only reason why Fretty and myself are likely to gap other healers in the raid is because they are mindlessly overhealing or simply don't care.

And that right there makes up the bulk of the skill curve for a healer in your average 24 man raid (or other mid tier content) right now. Do you actually care? Can you watch your screen? Can you read a tooltip? If so, congrats you can likely keep up with some of the most talented healers this game has.

That is NOT good design by any stretch of the imagination.

[Renathras]

Again, I wasn't the one who said it:

Something you've brought up before which is true is that there are many more players who have little issues with healers, or any job really, out playing the game, and getting their input is something that would be difficult to collect since they are part of the largest group of players that are basically "go-with-the-flow" type players who tend to be fairly content with most things as long as they don't find changes to be a chore or frustrating to deal with.

WHM is arguably in the best shape it has been in terms of lily usage, but taking away stuff from WHM consistently has already reduced its gameplay over the years. If it was at one point a 4 and then it dropped to a 2, just because it's in its best state as a 5, doesn't mean it's still good when the bar is up to a 10.

A fair point, but what I'm getting at is that the negative bias is likely rating them lower HERE than the community as a whole (if we were able to poll the entire playerbase) would. Meaning it wasn't 4 -> 2 -> 5. It was probably 7/6 -> 5/4 -> 7/8

Solace/Rapture (particularly Rapture) is part of your GCD rotation and healing plan. Where other Healers would use oGCDs, WHM uses Lilies (particularly Rapture, occasionally Solace) for. Even when using some oGCDs (like Plenary Indulgence), Rapture is the go-to AOE heal to proc its additional effect. Lilies are GCD heals that are part of your mapped out healing plan for encounters. Further, Misery is a damage gain over Glare if used in burst windows, even if there's no healing, using Solace/Rapture is a DPS gain (if you put the resulting Misery in a buff window) or DPS neutral (if you do not), meaning AT WORST, Solace/Rapture can be used as part of your GCD rotation for movement even if the entire party is at 100% health (which is almost never true anyway; at the least, the main Tank will almost always be at least some amount below 100% health)

If you're engaging in high end optimization, then the GCD rotation is rewarding and engaging because it's actually part of your healing strategy/plan. That is, if you're playing it right. If you're not optimizing, then it doesn't matter either way. So there's almost no time that the healing IS completely wasted, and it's always a damage gain if played correctly, and not a damage loss in either case.

Contrast AST, which has a 2 button DPS GCD rotation (Combust and Malific), or SCH which has a 3 button DPS GCD rotation, which is effectively two buttons, Biolysis and Broil, since Ruin 2's use is almost nonexistent now that Broil has a 1.5 sec cast time making it highly useful for movement and weaving. See this thread - https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...s-then-and-now - where I laid out the case for why Broil IV's cast time reduction really took a hammer to SCH's "rotation".

SGE has one Plegma per 40 sec (that can stack to 2 charges), and damage neutral Toxicon (3 at the start of a fight, can gain more but it's a DPS loss unless the shields are put up during downtime) and Pneuma (also DPS neutral GCD heal but on a 2 min CD so not really part of anything resembling a rotation). This provides more direct damage options, but with a slower cadence.

That is, WHM casts fewer Glares than SGE does Dosis, and AST and SCH are actually the ones that cast their basic nuke the most. WHM's Glarespam is broken up by Afflatus abilities, 4 per minute (consider you have 24 GCDs per minute, and that makes up 1/6th of them), and SGE's Plegma breaks up its Dosisspam ~1.5 times per minute (3 per 2 minutes). SCH and AST do not have any GCD damage ability that breaks up their nukespam unless you count Macrocosmos, which is a once per 3 min CD so not part of the standard rotation.

I'm not saying it's god tier, but WHM has the most GCDs devoted to damage (either directly or through Misery) of any Healer, and because of the way Misery works, its Afflatus GCD heals can be part of its healing plan, something no other Healer allows for (all the others use exclusively oGCDs for their healing plan outside of the rare SCH ultrashield type shenanegans)

In that thread, I compared WHM to SB WHM. I did this with all the healers, but WHM was the only one that came out of the changes better off than it was before in terms of "breaking up the nukespam":

In practice, SB WHM cast Aero 2 3.333... times per minute and Aero 3 2.5 times per minute. This is a total of 5.833... GCD casts per minute that weren't Stone IV.

In practice, EW WHM casts Dia 2 times per minute, 3 Afflatus (Solace/Rapture) per minute, and 1 Afflatus Misery per minute. This is a total of 6 GCD casts per minute that aren't Glare III.

On balance, EW WHM is casting non-Glare damage (or damage-adjacent Solace/Rapture) spells on roughly the same average frequency as SB era WHM did.

The real difference, honestly, is on the HEALING side, where a proliferation of oGCD heals (even on WHM) and the healing done by Afflatus heals can largely push non-Afflatus GCD heals off of average use, resulting in more Glare casts. Afflatus spells are, of course, being cast, but as noted, these can be thought of as part of the DPS rotation equivalent to the lost Aero 2 and 3 casts, so the foregone casts are Medica, Medica 2, Cure 2, Cure 3, and Regens, resulting in more "dead" GCDs that are filled with Glare.

As for SCH:

That's highly subjective. If you look at the long form answers to the Healer survey posted to Reddit both linked here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Healer-Survey

Main page: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...healer_survey/

Discussion page: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...healer_survey/

...the number one COMPLAINT about SCH was Energy Drain. It seems a large portion of the community doesn't find it engaging, they find it punitive. SCH has some interesting (at least to a lot of people) Aetherflow spenders. Excogitation and Sacred Soil are both abilities many players like to use. But they feel their hands are tied because of Energy Drain. One of the most cited requests was removing Energy Drain or making it not spend Aetherflow, and SGE was routinely praised by the respondents for NOT having that handicap.

Even in this survey, it was a common complaint:

"...and Energy Drain using Aetherflow stacks needs to be reworked to be more like SGE where you aren't penalized for using them for healing."

"Energy drain should give aether stacks and disspation dump them if you have an excess ( ideally it should have a situational reward for it ), make the CD for getting aetherflow shorter for compensate the lack of old dissipation."

"Attacking actions, I hate Energy Drain. It need to be removed or have the Aetherflow cost removed"

"I love using Aetherflow abilities, but Energy Drain means I can't use them without being a bad player, and that just sucks. I hate that feeling so much."

"Delete Energy Drain" (like, that was someone's whole comment on it, lol)

"Change Energy Drain from costing Aetherflow to just being an oGCD attack"

"Detach healing ogcds from energy drain. "

"Energy drain is a unique idea, using extra aetherflow not used for mit to boost your damage, but unfortunately it results in the average wanna-be rank 1 spamming all their aetherflow on ED and letting the party die. Remove it and use lustrate to burn excess gauge, like how sage does or rework energy drain. More DoTs would be cool."

...clearly, there's no consensus, but the idea that Energy Drain is good or that people overall like it is dubious. Indeed, the most requested thing for SCH was adding more (GCD, presumably) DoTs, not making more of its kit work like Energy Drain, where there were a lot of requests to change it or outright remove it.

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When people talk about Healers being boring, one thing often cited IS the GCD nukespam. Pointing out that WHM has the LEAST OF IT is valid.

WHM's bigger problem is that it has so much redundancy in its healing kit. It's the worst example, but WHM effectively has 3 versions of Cure 2. Cure 2, Tetra, and Solace all do essentially the same thing. The other main complaint is that healing (encounter design problem) is needed so little, that the toolkit seems overly healing bloated/powerful for the actual tasks it is required to do.

The thing about the Healing Jobs is they are well designed to have specialties, but then the game's encounter design no longer uses them - it once did, mind you, in SB, HW, and ARR. SCH was designed to work really well as an oGCD based Job that spent most of its GCD time upkeeping DoTs. WHM was designed originally as a GCD healer which spent much of its time upkeeping HoTs and spot healing (once upon a time, Freecure made sense as that was how the Job was actually played when MP was an issue and the focus was on spot healing). AST was based on having a Pure and Barrier stance, so it having all these mitigations on top of its powerful (clone of WHM) healing toolkit made sense, and it also had an entire side-game of something like 12 Arcana related abilities (between Draw, Play, Stock, Royal Road, and the various undraw/redraw mechanics that several of those had), so it having a super slim DPS kit made sense as the engagement was from the expansive oGCD toolkit, both for healing but moreso for managing its buff stack.

The problem is, encounter design changed, so that even the Healer that got better (WHM) is seen as worse despite objectively working better than it did then.

.

That is:

From a design perspective, WHM is better now than it was in ShB or in SB, and depending on how you view Cleric (a lot of people hated it), better than HW or ARR.

This is what I mean by looking at Job/class design as separate from encounter design. Designs can absolutely not match encounters. That doesn't make them bad design. Especially when the encounter design used to more fit them.

That said:

SCH and AST were objectively better off in SB.

So take that as you will.

Key point here, it's the best it's been in terms of balance. Balance and engagement are two very different things.

No, it's ALSO the best it's been in terms of balance. I've played WHM since ARR, the engagement is the same as it was. I've even shown you that before... The only issue there is, as I said above, needing fewer GCDs for healing. On average, you cast an Afflatus ability more or less as often as you would have cast an Aero 1 (HW) or Aero 3 (SB), so it has parity in that sense, and unlike ShB, doing so is always damage neutral (or a damage gain if Misery is used during burst windows).

SCH? AST? Oh yes, they DEFINITELY were different back then. WHM? Not so much other than you don't have to deal with Cleric like HW, but that was also true in SB.

BarbEX has roughly the same HPS requirements as Emerald WeaponEX. A trial from last expansion. Go think about that for a second.

Mhm. Again, encounter design. I'm not sure what the Devs are thinking at this point.

Secondly. Hand waving away anyone who so much dares as to claim that FFXIV's healers are poorly designed as subjective is comical.

Good thing I'm not doing that, then. I'm noting someone stating as undisputable fact FFXIV's healers are THE WORST DESIGNED is subjective and not likely true.

Did you ever touch healing in Swotor?

I did, but didn't enjoy it and didn't play it much. I kinda liked what the Agent/Smuggler looked like they might do (sustain healing using Combo Points like if a WoW Rogue had a healing skill tree) something interesting, but I never could get into that game for some reason.

Did you ever touch healing in Warhammer online?

Nope. And that game seemed so much a failure that...well, it's not around anymore, is it?

Both MMOs had healers who's kits had serious depth, broad utility and massively diverse styles of play with a ton of inter-kit interactions.

...because both games had combat systems that were not as rigid as FFXIV's, agreed? Nor is WoW's. Nor was RIFT's (a game I did play some of). The issue here comes less down to Healer design and more a combination of FFXIV's encounter design (which you seem to at least acknowledge) and that FFXIV's combat system is very rigid. For example, a sustain Healer wouldn't work in FFXIV's combat design because of the damage spikes being something it wouldn't have an answer to. We're seeing this in FFXIV's DPS/Tank design as well, just with the 2 min meta likewise making sustain damage Jobs (pre-6.3 PLD) unviable. The healing check spikes are a healer version of the 2 min meta...

...and honestly, I'm surprised I've never put that together before now. Huh.

Really? I'd legit expect this comment from Titanmen.

Who?

I feel this is an attempt at an ad hominem or insult...

Did you play WoW in 4.1 as a Healer, by chance? I was the only Healer I knew that didn't boycott doing dungeons that patch. Cataclysm saw so many Healer players retire because their healing kits WEREN'T powerful enough for the content. FFXIV's Healers now would work in that kind of content just fine.

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The one really big issue right now is that encounter design isn't actually flexing Healer toolkits AND/OR the Healers have WAY too many and too powerful oGCD heals. Fix either of those issues and the entire landsape would change.

Though personally, I'm also a fan of giving SGE it's SB rotation back and AST its SB incarnation as well (which also seem to be popular overall)

Best designed

I didn't say they were the best designed, now did I?

Worst designed healers don't make me laugh. You don't know what the F you are talking about.

Again:

From a design perspective, WHM is better now than it was in ShB or in SB, and depending on how you view Cleric (a lot of people hated it), better than HW or ARR.

This is what I mean by looking at Job/class design as separate from encounter design. Designs can absolutely not match encounters. That doesn't make them bad design. Especially when the encounter design used to more fit them.

That said:

SCH and AST were objectively better off in SB.

So take that as you will.

EDIT2:

This I agree with, though:

So yes, content design definitely has a lot of room to improve and even as someone who's been around and on the edge of world prog since ARR, SE's current 'esports friendly' design approach to high end content just feels super strange and at odds with the rest of the game to me. Sudo's designs were so much more organic and less 'by the numbers'. By comparison today's bosses feel like a box ticking exercise. AoE 5 seconds into the fight to remind healers that we care about them? Check.

One thing I'm not certain of, though - I've seen it said the Devs (or Yoshi P) have said they'll never go back to HW designs. I'm guessing that means Cleric, but not sure since I've never seen the exact quote. Or even if there is a quote and it wasn't just made up... I'm curious if it was real/legitimate or not. And I don't think they ever want a repeat of Midas/Gordias.

[ty_taurus]

There are a few things to note about forum engagement vs playerbase that's worth mentioning. The amount of players active on either here or reddit is small in comparison to the total population, and I think it's safe to assume that those outspoken in these spaces are likely more impassioned about job design issues overall than the population of players that are not active in thread discussions. Having said that, there's a fatal flaw in using the broader audience as a weapon against the criticisms that the healers, or any job generally faces: we have no way to actually quantify that difference in player opinion.

How many players that do not visit reddit or the forums actively think positively of the healers? How many of them feel more neutral about the healers, but are content playing as one? How many of them are not active healer mains and merely flex into the healing role as needed? How many of them would feel unhappy with the types of changes regularly proposed on the healer forums? How many of them aren't bothered by healers currently, but would enjoy the types of changes proposed on the healer forums? How many of them would feel indifferent and wouldn't change their opinion either way?

Unless you have a way to identify those percentages, you also cannot say that the harsher criticism of healer design found on the healer forums is not reflective of the community's general perception, just more intense or cutthroat. Note that these surveys were shared over on the healer forums earlier than this thread was posted, and it was the healers that started out with a higher vote count of somewhere in the 20s where many of the healers active on the healer forums input their feedback first, resulting in very low averages of around 2.5 - 3.5 for all healers. Now that many more players who do not frequent the healer corner, reddit players, and lurkers have input their feedback, the vote count is significantly higher, and the averages now sit around the 4.5 - 5.5 range. So we've already seen how the perspective has shifted, and I would argue that's is far closer to what the general perception is probably like: the healers aren't hated as much, but aren't really seen as good either--inoffensive.