What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[ForsakenRoe]

It doesn't matter why SGE is the way it is, what matters is that it has always BEEN the way it is. This is the only incarnation it's had. It didn't lose anything such that jaded vets pine for getting it back. It doesn't have jaded vets who have played it since 3.0 or 2.0 or 1.4 (whenever Jobs were added to 1.X) who have gone through all the ups and downs and seen all the various iterations of their Jobs, what they lost and gained and lost other stuff to eclipse the gains. It doesn't have those jaded vets pining for what once was, or feeling betrayed by their Job moving away from what it once was, because it never was before this (6.0-Present) to have been "once was".

Instead it has jaded vets from other healers (WHM SCH AST mains) hoping that they can finally have some depth and complexity back, added via a new job (but that's acceptable as the monkey's paw bargain they have to make to get that depth), and instead it has the same amount of depth (or maybe even less in some regards) than what we've already got. The 'breath of fresh air' was just more of the same, and that's why people are jaded about it, not because of losing an older beloved incarnation

and to be fair, from the numbers I could find, SB was the lowest point of Healers, even lower than ShB, by percent of the playerbase

Is that the numbers that we have seen from Wayback Machine, that you yourself said 'probably is not reliable data', and even if it WAS reliable, showed that 'as a percentage of the total playerbase', HW or early SB (depending when the data was collected in the year) was the highest percentage we've had, even in comparison to today? Cleric Stance was not an issue because it forced people to do damage, it was an issue because it forced people to gimp their healing output in order to do damage. SB fixed this by making it a throughput CD, and having damage spells scale from Mind. There was zero reason to remove it and the damage GCDs we lost in the SHB transition beyond 'we want healers to focus more on healing' and they've shown they can't actually threaten competent players with healing requirements without completely boning the casuals

[Renathras]

Instead it has jaded vets from other healers

Yeah, but that's the point: If we change the other three back to their SB incarnations in 7.0 (not sure WHMs would be thrilled about being worthless in basically all content, but I guess they already are compared to other Healers, so nothing will have changed there; they'll just be the one Healer unable to clear some content, I guess? Because apparently that's good game design!), then those jaded vets from those other Healer Jobs would simply be able to pick up their old Job and no longer need the new one.

Is that the numbers that we have seen from Wayback Machine,

Correct, the only numbers we have as no one else was able to provide any alternate data-set.

Note that, at the time, most of the playerbase did not do Savage (or even Extremes) and large portions of the Healer community used Cleric Stance for soloing only. It's also worth noting that DPS Jobs in HW made up only 53% of the Jobs overall (7/13) while they make up 59% in ShB (10/17) and still make up 58% today (11/19). By contrast, Healers made up 23% (3/13), 18% (3/17), and 21% (4/19) of the Jobs in those same periods. So if Job ratio is at all active in player role count (and it does likely have some effect; new Jobs in a role do tend to boost participation in that role for at least a little while), then one would expect the number of Healers to decrease going from HW to SB to ShB. Despite this, Healer numbers actually seemed to have gone up from SB to ShB, which also opposes the narrative that Healers as a whole were alienated by the ShB changes and left the role. That seems not to have occurred, and SB seems to have been the low point.

It'd be nice if we had some kind of official census, though, to really see trends more accurately instead of having to use imperfect metrics in attempts to piece together things.

[ty_taurus]

Note that, at the time, most of the playerbase did not do Savage (or even Extremes) and large portions of the Healer community used Cleric Stance for soloing only.

And what's wrong with that? Isn't that literally what many of us have been advocating for? Tank-adjacent DPS gameplay that is ultimately optional in 95% of the game that way anyone who doesn't care to use them doesn't have to?

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, but that's the point: If we change the other three back to their SB incarnations in 7.0 (not sure WHMs would be thrilled about being worthless in basically all content, but I guess they already are compared to other Healers, so nothing will have changed there; they'll just be the one Healer unable to clear some content, I guess? Because apparently that's good game design!)

Modern class design choices inspired by design philosophy from 4.0 (and following a consistent evolution upon that earlier framework) =/= 'copy paste 4.0 exactly, including the parts that were completely nonfunctional'

I don't think anyone who says 'lets go back to 4.0 style healer design' is implying 'and by that I mean 'make WHM lilies absolute trash again'', and to try and imply as much just shows how desperate the search for a Gotcha is getting

Let's do it, make SGE the one that gets 'left behind' with the justification that it has no previous incarnation to go back to. Just retcon the lore to say 'learning how to be a Sage is actually really damn easy', and retcon all the Fanfest interviews and say 'actually people who wanted a challenge from healers can now get a challenge from the healers, and for the people who don't want a challenge from healers, we're adding a new one which caters to that'