For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[ForsakenRoe]

Let one healer have this stupid ass rotation - probably White Mage

This part is the part that makes me think it's more a case of 'well if there has to be a pound of flesh offered in sacrifice, let it be this one for X reason', my assumption being, he prefers SCH/AST, especially considering how he goes on about Noct Sect. So if he has zero inclination to play WHM now or after this '4 healers rework', it wouldn't have any effect on him if the class was still in the place it's in now. He'd be on AST or SCH or 'gigabrain mindmelting rotation' SGE.

Maybe it's some nuance of language where he's from, but I've never heard someone say 'stupid ass X' and mean it in a positive light

I don't propose to keep WHM exactly the same, but simply not to alter it too much, so it won't alienate casuals, and then bring back AST and SCH to former glory. I fully understand that this is not ideal, however, it is realistic. How many times in this game's history did they make job harder and more complex, instead of easier and more brain dead? Which is why I think it's okay to have this sacrificial lamb, that people dissatisfied with the potential changes can turn to.

Yes, my idea is essentially negotiating, again, it's not ideal, but it's more realistic. There are casuals, which do indeed like playing healers for their simplicity. Some people are just fine with 1211111, and even though my inner gamer would want these people to wake up and put more effort into their gameplay, that's unrealistic, this game does have a lot of these people, and we know from the past that devs are afraid of the casuals and wouldn't want to go against them.

As for implementation details, there's a lot of theory crafting, with making GCD heals be worth it, making healers actually heal and so on. You could make AST cards GCD, but next malefic will deal 2x damage, Adlo could deal damage if it bursts, or refund you gauge when it doesn't, whatever, there's lot of options how you could fix healers. But I'm not really qualified for this, and jumping straight into details when we don't know if SE will even bother doing something is not my forte.

I mean, technically same, I don't want WHM to change 'much', I just take issue with the idea that it does not change 'at all'. All we need is shorter Dia duration, and a new GCD that is staggered slightly from Dia so they don't just come up at the same time (leading to a 32111 loop every time). The problem that is hard to work with is that SE seems to have this repository of data collated, that they reference when making changes, but nobody seems to know who the data was collated from. JP thinks the devs listen to NA, NA thinks the devs listen to JP. So I have to wonder, for example, when the change to High Jump (merging with Mirage Dive) was made, who did they get feedback from asking for that specific change? There's several other changes they make that are apparently informed by feedback, but with no source given, or in some cases, completely incorrect data, like SHB's reduction in damage skills on healers, justified by 'SCH would force WHM to do all the healing (the two were equal on HPS, and now that mit is considered HPS on FFlogs, SCH would be far far ahead)'.

So, when someone on these forums tries to make an idea of 'how to make the healers a bit more fun to play, but also keep them casual friendly, but also keep their job identities intact, and also keep them balanced against their peers', it's like we're walking through a minefield. At any moment we could set off one of the 'mines of argument' about a specific point, because we don't know what the conditions the devs design around actually are. We can assume, with WHM for example, 'the devs want to keep the class easy to approach, feels powerful and rewarding when using your strong heals, has more of a focus on GCD healing', and try to design around those points (ie, bringing back Divine Seal as a way to have a heal% increase tool at lower levels, plays into 'GCD heal focused'). But without any direct confirmation about anything, we're basically flying blind. And that means some suggestions veer into getting shot down instantly because 'the devs would never do this', because they said 'screw it, IDK what the devs have as the 'lines in the sand' for the class, I'll just go all out with what I want the class to be if I had full creative authority'.

You want a suggestion on how to make GCD heals worth it? Medica 2 has a 45-60s CD, generates one blood lily. Cure 3 generates a blood lily when used under the effect of Medica 2's HOT. Now you have Cure3 having more relevance, it has a way to be damage neutral, Med2 100% uptime memes are removed (this means people learn earlier on that spamming it is not efficient), the non-100% uptime nature of the change means that the MP issue/'punishing because every 4th GCD has to be a Misery' Ren accidentally caused doesn't occur, and you could do the same with a 30s CD Regen > Cure2 generates blood lily. Make BL stack to 5 via traits (and give Misery a 15-20s CD so you aren't able to get two into raidbuffs via memes), something like that IDK there's probably some issues still with the idea. I don't exactly like the idea of making everything damage neutral with zero downsides (ie, every heal GCD on WHM is just neutral), I'd prefer it to be 'neutral with a conditional to work around'. Lily heals are neutral, but you only get one per 20s. AST OGCDs are neutral (they're OGCD) but they have their own CDs to work around. So, having Medica 1 remain as the 'everything's going wrong' panic AOE heal, and Med2 > Cure3 be the more MP-hungry-but-damage-neutral strat is better design in my eyes. Well, 'better design' as far as that idea can be 'better', I'd rather have other solutions but we're all very aware of how I'd handle things by now

[Renathras]

This is like complaining that a room is too dark to be used as a guest room because the lights are off. Have you tried turning them on?

I'm not even sure what you mean by this other than "How about if SE allows Classes to be viable in all content?"; which I'd find interesting, but insanely unlikely considering they haven't added a new one since ROG and they were only debatably useful in specific casts (MRD, mostly) in ARR, and even then were largely relics of 1.0 when there weren't Jobs and they didn't even plan on adding Jobs. Besides, at that point we'd open up the floodgates; "Why isn't GLD a fully capable class like CNJ?", "Why can't I take THM into high end content?", and so on. They COULD do it, but that would be a far bigger rework than just adding a new Job at this point since it would need to be done for every Class or the whole system wouldn't even make sense at that point.

I don't actually think anything useful will ever be done with the classes,

Agreed. And that was my point as well.

The entire argument originally was to try find some way to compromise with you who is entirely unwilling to compromise an inch for the sake of conversation.

Ahem:

My initial position: Don't change any of the healers/don't make them more complex.
My second proposal: How about we change 2 to more complex and keep 2? Works with the Pure/Barrier split.
My third proposal: Okay, how about we just leave 1 the same? WHM makes the most sense.
My fourth proposal: Okay, how about SGE as the 1 we leave the same? There's a decent argument for that.
My fifth proposal: Okay, how about we leave 1 the same, and you can pick it, even the one I like the least, AST?
My sixth proposal: Okay, so I get nothing? You won't leave me even one? Okay, how about we add a new healer to be near one we already have (I suggested Druid vs White Mage with Druid being the complex elementalist dps rotation), where it can be a "complex version" and the 1 can remain unchanged as the simple one and you get all 4 of the rest and IN EFFECT also get a complex version of the one we don't change?
My seventh propsal: Okay, so you want all the existing healers (aesthetics was the argument at the time, somehow not satisfied with Druid, even though that's what people are proposing for their WHM change suggestions... <_<), so how about we give you all 4 we have and make the added/new one the simple one, even though that makes the least logical sense?
My seventh proposal: Okay, so you really want NONE to be where I can enjoy them? Alright...so here's a proposal for SCH, already arguably the most complex, to get a LITTLE more complex but MOSTLY stay the same, and you get all the rest. How's that?

VS:

Your initial position: All the healers must change to be more complex. They need something to do during downtime. They need complex DPS rotations.
Your second (final up until now) position after a lot of debates/discussions: Okay, so some people don't like doing damage. How about all healers must change to be more complex. They need something to do during down time. 3 get complex DPS rotations and 1 gets a complex buffing rotation.

...and that's also been your FINAL position. Until the post above where you suggest "White Mage Classic", your position has been unyielding across, what, a year and a half of us having these back and forths?

...right. So now that we're clear I'm not the one "unwilling to compromise an inch for the sake of conversation". Hell, I DID compromise 3 inches for the very sake of conversation, remember? Here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-Proposal-SCH

Did you forget that time I compromised several inches entirely for the sake of conversation? And that I was literally the ONLY one compromising at all?

(Also, this comes across as just another version of "Let's have White Mage Classic" - though if you read the post I just quoted from above, I'm not opposed to that idea entirely. Hell, IT WAS ORIGINALLY MY IDEA lest your forget: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6238083

Remember? Where we had that big fallout because you were insisting it needed to be a Class and didn't read my posts? And you eventually admitted you didn't read my posts, but used the excuse of me insulting you as a reason for you not to apologize?
...I'm not intending to rehash THAT fiasco of a "discussion" other than to point out I literally proposed this before, that we add Druid as a branching Job from WHM just like how SCH/SMN both branch from ACN, and have Druid work as the simple WHM, or alternatively, WHM as the simple one and Druid the more complex nature one. (This also goes back to your unwillingness to allow a Job/aesthetic to be simple UNLESS there's an identical complex one, but you are NOT willing to share that across all the Jobs, as noted in your latest post here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6310132 , which kind of reeks of a "As long as I have mine, I don't care; I'm only willing to share if I still get it AND OTHER THINGS TOO and you get only the breadcrumbs I give you to pacify you", which is...I've before used the word selfish, because that's what it is, but I know that offends you, I just don't know what other word to use, since it's not any positive word I can think of. A compromise that is "I get everything I want and you get only the smallest thing you want while I still get that, too, you just get a lesser copy" is effectively what it is.)

But I'm the "inflexible" one. Right... <_<

As to it being "stupid": Yeah, the Devs can program and flip flags and all that. But if they made one and only one Class viable in all content (CNJ) and no others, that would seem like a really nonsensical system. "Yeah, so classes are baby Jobs that you promote out of. You don't use them in end-game content. Oh, except this one. It's used in end-game content. It's used as a baby there, but it can be used there. But none of the others. Why not? Because we were too lazy to add another Job and we were also too lazy to make all the other Classes viable."

Imagine you're a new player and you're told Classes aren't viable. But then you have this one exception. So this new player hears that Classes (CNJ) are viable. Then goes into an end game raid on GLD and gets destroyed and berated and quits the game in frustration because they don't understand what happened.

It makes way more sense, given what's established and how the game has worked since 3.0 (adding new Jobs and no new Classes) to just make it a full Job. The alternatives of making all Classes viable OR only one (CNJ) just don't make sense, and seem more like you want all players to have some psychological clue that "the baby healer isn't a real Job" or something. There's just no logical reason to do what you propose and it would be more work than just adding a new Job.

If the dev team wanted to do it they can do it far more easily than adding an entire new job.

No. It would not be "far more easily" because, again, they'd have to rework all Classes to be viable OR have a wonky system of only one Class being viable in a system that otherwise has only Jobs and where Classes, for all practical applications, do not exist. There is no world where that's "more easily" than just adding a new Job. Especially when they can simply copy wholesale all the abilities of an existing Job and only need to swap the FVX on a dozen or so abilities, and the VFX they'd be swapping to are already in the game. Hell, making CNJ where it gaimed higher level WHM abilities like Stone IV would be harder than just coping the WHM Job and having one version that stopped at Stone IV instead of upgrading to Glare.

and aren't trying to bargain with a forum white knight for some peace and quiet.

And that, Ty, is you finally getting to the crux of the matter:

You aren't interested in compromise. You just want me to stop representing a separate position and shut up. Inflexibility, thy name is Ty.

You can keep calling me inflexible if you wish, but the record shows otherwise.

[ty_taurus]

You aren't interested in compromise. You just want me to stop representing a separate position and shut up. Inflexibility, thy name is Ty.

You can keep calling me inflexible if you wish, but the record shows otherwise.

You can keep being wrong about what "inflexible" means if you wish, but the records actually show that you are wrong.

I was fully on board with your suggestion to have White Mage's gameplay be inspired by Paladin--something that offers more like what I and others have asked for while still being straightforward and enjoyable for you. I don't know why you abandoned that train of thought. I think that's a perfectly valid compromise. It should be different than Paladin, but can feel inspiration from it and try to attain the same general level of offensive complexity or even a little less.

No. It would not be "far more easily" because, again, they'd have to rework all Classes to be viable OR have a wonky system of only one Class being viable in a system that otherwise has only Jobs and where Classes, for all practical applications, do not exist.

Listen to someone who actually works in the field. It is considerably less work and less time required to simplify and adjust 9 classes than it is to create an entire new job concept from scratch along with all the animations, weapons, visual effects, sound effects, story quests, etc. And you don't even need all 9 all at once. You could have one per role as "beginner" classes that are viable for savage even if not meta that way anyone who's trying to learn the game has something very easy to start with. And if you like the training wheels, you can keep them on if you so choose.

Remember? Where we had that big fallout because you were insisting it needed to be a Class and didn't read my posts? And you eventually admitted you didn't read my posts, but used the excuse of me insulting you as a reason for you not to apologize?

Is that like the other day when you asked if I'd play an official support role, and I kept giving you more and more detailed answers because you refused to read each answer over and over until I literally made you a flowchart, then you got pissy and told me you weren't speaking to me anymore because I wasn't answering you, even though you just were ignoring my answers time and time again. Like that?

[Renathras]

Mate, you were acting like any narrowing of ideas could only come from a narrowing of interests, seemingly to then dismiss ideas coming from these forums (unless in agreement with you) as a result of interests too narrow to be worth considering remotely representative.

/sigh

Good god, but we could have such good discussions if you people didn't lie. Though I think it's less lying and more you just imagine/interpret me saying things I didn't, then instead of asking for clarification, run with that.

Where - show me one place - I "dismissed" what these forums say?

I've said it doesn't represent the majority.
I've said it's an echo chamber.
I've said it doesn't allow for dissenting voices.

But where did I say it has nothing of value to consider and/or dismissed it outright? If I dismissed it outright, I wouldn't support the 4 Healers Model!

While the nature of the participants is a possible reason for narrowed ideas, the nature of that participation in the given venue is just as likely a reason for why discourse may vary between two locations.

It's also likely the participants. Again, find a more general audience and you see more varied views. That was literally the only point I was making.

Which is exactly what one will see, too, in perusing r/ffxiv and r/ffxivdiscussion. Both tend to show the same base opinions as here.

Except they ALSO show OTHER opinions than here. Opinions not represented here. I represent some, but there are people there outright "healers are supposed to heal, not dps", and even I don't hold that position.

Which mattered oh so much... in P9 Normal? ???

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS AGAIN??

I was making a point. I made that specific point clear. The point was that casuals and DoTs do not mix well. If you want to address my point, address MY POINT. My point was not "DoT upkeep in normals is relevant". I DID NOT MAKE THAT POINT.

My point WAS that casuals are not good with DoT upkeep. And it was in opposition to the idea that putting more of our damage in our DoTs would help casuals, and was trying to show by example how this forum's ideas of "I'm proposing a compromise to help casuals" do not, in fact, achieve the goal of helping casuals. Good GOD!

And you're going to claim, what, that it'd be utterly abhorrent/unfair/devastating if a healer should have to hit more than a single button to get 90% of its damage potential?

GOAL POST MOVE AGAIN!@!?!?!

WHEN I have I EVER claimed that a healer should not be allowed to get more than 10% damage from buttons aside from their nukespam?

Even RIGHT NOW, if we LEFT HEALERS ENTIRELY ALONE, they get more than 10% of their damage from more than one button. Top party clear for P9S right now on the abacus has a SCH and AST. The SCH has 6,340 DPS from Broil IV and 1,271.6 from Biolysis, 462.1 from Energy Drain, 44 from Ruin 2, and even 39.5 from freakin' autoattack. Total DPS: 8,157.2 Broil IV = 6,340/8,157.2*100% = 77.7%. 77.7% << 90%.

AST: 5,538.6/7041.1*100% = 78.7%.

SGE (19th clear from the top): 5,979.9/8,478*1000% = 70.5%

WHM (27th clear, the WHM is a 91, not even 99): 5,360/8,061.4*100% = 66.5%.

NONE of the Healers RIGHT NOW get 90+% damage from one button. If we DIDN'T CHANGE THEM AT ALL, they would continue to have to press more than one button for their damage.

No one. LITERALLY no one, is making the argument "it'd be utterly abhorrent/unfair/devastating if a healer should have to hit more than a single button to get 90% of its damage potential". NO ONE IS MAKING THAT ARGUMENT, so your "rebuttal" of it or accusation I am are not only completely irrelevant, it's an outright lying straw man.

It's even WORSE since I (a) have proposed changing 3 of the healers and (b) even proposed changing ALL FOUR while making the most complex one right now the least changed.

I can't even with the rest of this post... Maybe I can come back later, but &$^# man. That's garbage.

Balancing around people's mistakes is bad.

....

You're a generally good faith person, so I suspect this was unintentional, Sebazy, but:

Goal post move.

My point was that DoTs are not the vehicle to use to improve casual player performance. Misery is a far better tool. If your goal was to devalue lost GCD Glares, upping Misery would be the solution there, since casual WHM's love the heck out of that thing and don't tend to skimp on using it.

Also, I don't think "didn't keep a DoT up or even apply it" is in the category of "mistake". Letting a DoT fall off isn't a "mistake". A mistake is when you hot a button that's not optimal, not when you lose track of something because the native UI of the game does

not present it to you well. I do agree some other fixes might help with this problem, but I again will point out to you that upkeep for DoTs is probably the biggest thing casual players (ones who DO understand ABC and oGCD > GCD) still have a problem with. If the goal is to help casual players, putting more on the DoT is the wrong call unless you make the DoT's idiot proof. It's a lot easier to fill dead GCDs with Glare or use Misery when the big pink flower opens up with a chime than it is to upkeep a DoT. I'm not sure how this is a difficult concept to comprehend and I'm not sure how to explain it better.

But the point is, if you are proposing something to help casuals (and you were), and to help people who more rely on/use GCD heals (which...are going to be casuals, so same group/lots of overlap at least), then the answer cannot be to use the DoT to do so.

Yes and no, I feel. If a job is, to the vast majority of players, more difficult to optimize than other jobs and you give it nothing compensatory for that fact... then you basically just put it on most players' avoid lists.

To me, it's fine that a given job has a bit of an advantage among your "95th percentile" and up kind of players... so long as it also is likely to underperform among your 25th and under or so. It'd just mean you couldn't balance the tiers of difficulty/optimizations among each job quite evenly which... yeah, would be nearly impossible to do and isn't worth pursuing over job identity.

Something we agree on.

Not withstanding my prior annoyance above: I agree with you on this 100%.

(To be clear, that reward doesn't always have to be total direct throughput. It could be flexibility or the like... so long as that flexibility were actually relevance.)

This is why I think things like Expedience are good options. It's why I thought ShB SMN doing comparable damage to BLM while also having a Raise was a good option. Things that are harder can offer side-grade perks without destroying balance or blacklisting/blackballing other Jobs. The issue is that they need to be things that are nice to have but not strictly necessary. A bonus but not a game changing one that makes it a must have party member for that slot.

[Renathras]

I don't propose to keep WHM exactly the same, but simply not to alter it too much, so it won't alienate casuals, and then bring back AST and SCH to former glory. I fully understand that this is not ideal, however, it is realistic. How many times in this game's history did they make job harder and more complex, instead of easier and more brain dead? Which is why I think it's okay to have this sacrificial lamb, that people dissatisfied with the potential changes can turn to.

This is long been my argument. Even for a while with me holding the "keep 1 the same" argument, I usually make allowances such as "bring back Aero 3".

As for implementation details, there's a lot of theory crafting, with making GCD heals be worth it, making healers actually heal and so on. You could make AST cards GCD, but next malefic will deal 2x damage,

I've also made both of these proposals. My one for AST if cards were made GCD is to make Draw or Play (or both, but probably just one or the other) a GCD with an additional effect to increase the next Malific's damage by 100%, and that this buff can stack up to three (to reflect when you fire off 3 cards to party members in buffs), which...would basically make it into the Misery system, but that system actually WORKS, so that's not a bad thing, and it would reduce the hyper-APM during burst that a lot of people have issues with on AST. (I always add the caveat that AST is the one healer Job I don't play, and I know some people LIKE the business, so I think it pays to ask them; but if I was going to make a change, it would probably be that). And I'm also the one posting about how we could make GCD heals worth it and proposed damage neutral states on WHM GCD heals or SGE's barrier GCDs (both of which were shot down as being too good for casuals/eliminating mistakes/etc)

I think we discussed this enough in that SMN thread. It's complex set of issues, it's not just about damage, it's also about difficulty (both general and encounter-specific), utility and tax for it, mobility, community's perception and many more.

It is, though I still think that the issue is chiefly damage. People still brought BLM to raids in ShB even in the patches SMN did comparable damage. Both had a place, even though one had more utility. The issue comes when you're doing more work for even less reward. If you're getting the same reward with some added utility, people are often good with that trade. It's when you're actively harming your party vs the alternative that people balk.

.

We only have so many posts in a day. Which means only so many replies. And when half a dozen people in a thread are all talking to (or at) you, it cuts down on replies. Though I will try to use more [hb] tags. I do that fairly often anyway.

[Renathras]

You can keep being wrong about what "inflexible" means if you wish, but the records actually show that you are wrong.

How?

As I've shown above, I've bent SEVEN TIMES from my initial position, each time giving ground. And the last bend was even giving up my "no change" position entirely.

How could I be more flexible than that?

Meanwhile, your position has consistently been change must occur. Never once have you wavered from that position, other than what I think was a sarcastic "White Mage Classic", and two times where you've said it's okay for CONJURUER, but only as a Class, not as a Job, to be a simple healer. That's like saying "How about we make Conjurer the complex healer and have the rest all be simple?", you just don't want to see it.

How is it flexible to go from "Jobs must be more complex and they must all change" to "Jobs must be more complex and they must all change"?

Your willingness to be interested - though I don't recall you fully supporting it - making WHM more complex (on the order of PLD, but that's still more complex) and changing it as opposed to leaving it alone is flexibility?

And what part of me changing my position seven (eight? I'd forgotten about the WHM proposal) times me being inflexible?

Especially when you say you supported one of the changes?

You need to stop with these petty insults. Especially when they're lies and you're describing what you do as an insult against me. I've shown far more change and flexibility on this issue than you have. I don't know how going from "change none of the healers" to "change all of the healers just leave one SOMEWHAT alone" is inflexible on my part.

Listen to someone who actually works in the field.

Appeal to authority fallacy? I also did ask you once before what game(s) you work on. You didn't answer, so I have no actual evidence you do work in the field, btw.

It is considerably less work and less time required to simplify and adjust 9 classes than it is to create an entire new job concept from scratch along with all the animations, weapons, visual effects, sound effects, story quests, etc.

Okay...first, disagree. You'd have to to make 9 sets of ability adjustments and tuning, as well as balance them going forward against all the Jobs in the game. We'd go from 19 Jobs to 29 Jobs overnight. They'd also need new animations, since they'd progress together up to a point and then diverge. For example, when WHM goes from Stone IV to Glare to Glare 2, CNJ would go from Stone IV to Stone V to Stone VI. Those are still new animations. You may or may not need new weapons, but you would need new visual effects and sound effects. The only thing you wouldn't need is a new story quest, but the new story quests (did SGE and did GNB back in ShB) weren't exactly a ton of work. A few dozen dialogue boxes, a couple of NPCs, a couple of "purple circle spawns 3 enemies", and a pair of instanced solo encounters that entirely use existing assets, like the RPR entry one that uses one room of Cutter's Cry and existing enemy assets there are probably less work than not only adjusting abilities for 9 Classes but then trying to balance 29 Class/Jobs from now on.

On the other hand, say we added Druid. It has all the same weapons as WHM. It uses the same gear as WHM/SCH/AST/SGE. You're adding one new artifact armor and Relic weapon per expansion, and you were going to do this anyway (suppose Druid was one of the two new Jobs in DT, for example). Come to it, you were going to add that new Job (Corsair and ?Green Mage?) to the game, so you allocated the assets to new story. In fact, adding Druid as a split from CNJ would be LESS work than adding a new Job like SGE, since you don't need as many new animations with it sharing gear with WHM up until level 90 probably (might get different main hands from then on); even if it was an entirely new Job that didn't split from CNJ, it's no more difficult than adding a new Job, so if we get 2 of those per expansion no matter what, making Druid one of those doesn't change anything.

As for assets: They're all in the game. Aero 1/2/3? In the game files. Stone 1/2/3/4? In the game files. Water? Fluid Aura is in the game files and many enemies like Mind Flayers cast the Water spell, meaning it's in the game files. Literally the only new things are things you're adding anyway with the new expansion's allotted 2 Jobs. So say in 8.0 they added Druid as a new healer, this would be literally no additional overhead. Meanwhile, converting all the Classes into full on Jobs, balanced against Jobs, that can participate in all content and must be balanced against Jobs in all content would be far more difficult...

...all to maintain your seeming desire that the "baby" Jobs not be allowed to be called Jobs.

Maybe you work in the field, but that seems nonsensical.

And if you're doing only one per role, that makes EVEN LESS sense - again, it makes the design convoluted to new players. "Why can I do high end content on GLD, CNJ, and ACN but not MRD or LNC or THM?"

There's zero logic to doing this as opposed to just adding a new Job.

Good gosh, SOMEONE else has to see this? For the love of Newton, back me up, totally-not-an-echo-chamber forum. >_<

[ForsakenRoe]

This is long been my argument. Even for a while with me holding the "keep 1 the same" argument, I usually make allowances such as "bring back Aero 3".

Given that allowance for Aero 3 (use once per 24s, or every 10th-ish GCD), which part of my design was the part that went 'over the line', given that all I'm asking to do to the rotation (in terms of hotbar buttons pressed, not 'new actions') was Dia every 5th GCD instead of every 12th as it is now, and Banish every 6th GCD. Is it the shortening of the DOT, the addition of a seperate button, the CD on said button, or some combination of those 3 changes where 2 of them would be ok but the third is 'the straw that breaks the camel's back'? Because as far as I can see, your SCH pitch that most people found 'agreeable' at least, is about same as what I'm asking of WHM. So is the issue just that it's WHM that I did the changes to?

It is, though I still think that the issue is chiefly damage. People still brought BLM to raids in ShB even in the patches SMN did comparable damage. Both had a place, even though one had more utility. The issue comes when you're doing more work for even less reward. If you're getting the same reward with some added utility, people are often good with that trade. It's when you're actively harming your party vs the alternative that people balk.

While it wasn't BLM level, SMN back then required more skill to execute than it does now, what with the whole 'stand perfectly still in Baha windows so he doesn't miss Wyrmwaves due to moving' and all that. As such, you might be better off looking at all three casters, and seeing if RDM was significantly lower in participation metrics than the other two. I feel like it was a case of 'RDM for prog, swap after clear (or even maybe 'swap once enrage is reached, to push more damage')

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There's zero logic to doing this as opposed to just adding a new Job.
Good gosh, SOMEONE else has to see this? For the love of Newton, back me up, totally-not-an-echo-chamber forum. >_<

Yeh, normally I'd disagree with you since the amount of extra devtime would be long cos of VFX and such, but in this particular case, I think you're maybe right. To create a new 'elemental themed' healer job would take comparatively little time, especially compared to 'make 9 classes rebalanced such that they can tackle endgame content'. This is only because, however, SE has a combination of 'cut so much skills from jobs over the years', 'enemy attacks' and 'extra content actions (eureka/bozja)' that they already have all the VFX needed in the game files. The only one I'm not super sure about is Water 2, we can use Water 1 from Sprites/Fluid Aura, Water 3 can be one of those geysers from eg Dohn Mheg first boss, and Flood is used by Y'shtola sometimes (big ball)

The problem is, again, certain people (like me) are going to ask 'ok why did WHM have to lose it's elemental themes, just for some other bozo class to get it', even if said bozo class is 'literally the same class you were before you put on the egg-shaped job rock'

[Sebazy]

You're a generally good faith person, so I suspect this was unintentional, Sebazy, but:

Goal post move.

My point was that DoTs are not the vehicle to use to improve casual player performance. Misery is a far better tool. If your goal was to devalue lost GCD Glares, upping Misery would be the solution there, since casual WHM's love the heck out of that thing and don't tend to skimp on using it.

At the risk of being brutally honest here....

Perhaps you don't realise you're doing it, but it feels like you come up with a theory and nothing will change your mind over it. You'll willingly die on that hill even when people come back at you with cold hard data that goes entirely against your narrative.

Case in point, I went to Kokytos normal, all reports, all kills, WHM only, clicked the first link and lo and behold.....

If you don't want to click through, that's 97% uptime on Dia and 1 Misery cast in a 6:30 clear. The other WHM had 81% on dia and 3 Miserys.

Here's another more mid to high tier log.... 78% run, 95% on Dia, 5 Miserys.

Next in line, 57% run, 84% uptime on Dia, 2 Miserys, 5:54 kill time.

The new log that isn't a 90+ log..., 67% run, 85% uptime on Dia, 3 Miserys, 6:24 kill time.

I can keep on going if you want but hopefully by now the point is made:

No, dots are not exclusively the biggest factor casuals struggle with. It's just cooldown/timed abilities in general, be it getting value from things like Benison, Aquaveil or as demonstrated, even just remembering to blast out those Lilies. Get 5 different casuals with bad logs and you'll likely find 5 different core facets of the gameplay that they struggle with. As the links above demonstrate, suggesting that Misery is somehow significantly easier for casuals to remember is patently false. It's all too easy to panic and overcap, it's easy to use Medica II as a comfort blanket and fail to throw out nearly enough Lilies under the assumption that overhealing with them is bad. As I said before, there is no perfect one size fits all solution. Dots aren't it and neither is Misery. Luckily we have 4 healers and thus SE can try different approaches with each eh? Just giving everyone damage neutral healing GCDs is a risky copout IMO.

As for letting a dot fall off not being a mistake... Goal post move.

A mistake is when you hot a button that's not optimal

Pressing Glare when Dia isn't up is not optimal. By your own definition, it's a mistake.

Seriously though, the game could do a better job of displaying dots for sure, but I've covered that topic to death already.

[ty_taurus]

How?

Because none of your stances are actually compromising the concern in question. They're all about anchoring at least one job to remain unchanged for the rest of eternity, never allowed to change because you like it the way it is. You aren't actually budging on your stance, and you act as though it is by your mercy that we are allowed to want to rework the other jobs as long as we pinky promise we won't want to change White Mage too, or whatever job you're offering as the sacrificial lamb that particular day.

The stance of "This system does not work, and it should change to anything that isn't this" has infinite possibilities that I am 100% open to discuss. That's the opposite of Inflexible. As I said several times now, I liked your suggestion of having White Mage's offensive gameplay inspired by Paladin--a suggestion that you seem to continue to ignore for some reason. Is it because I agree with you about that? "Oh shit, he actually likes that idea. Time to backpedal!" If I didn't agree with you, would you have listed that as another example of your gracious compromises as well? Why are you pretending like that wasn't a conversation? Do you just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing?

It's like with the support role teeth-pulling session where you shut down and completely ignore anything referencing it because you didn't like the answers I gave you about my opinion over and over, which is even weirder quite frankly. My answer wasn't a "gotcha!" moment for you so you've abandoned ship? I don't understand your modus operandi.

Appeal to authority fallacy?

I'd rather not post my job location on a public forum, so fair enough it's not fair for me to pull that card. I shouldn't do that, but I'm just annoyed because I know what I'm talking about. I've literally done it and I just don't think you understand that there's no functional difference between classes or jobs. And no I really don't care if it's called a class or a job, I'm just saying you can repurpose the asset that's already in the game as a roundabout way of securing the baby's first MMORPG playstyle without condemning any singular job to that playstyle perpetually. I'll also tolerate adding in DPS actions to every healer, and then allowing the player to manually disable them, which inversely increases the potency of your filler spell by a small amount for each one you disable. You could even disable Dia if you wanted. You only require Glare, Holy, and Afflatus Misery. If that's the bargaining chip I need to see each healer fixed and not anchored down to a Little Tike's Tricycle, then I'm all for it. But none of that should be needed.

As has been said probably hundreds of times across multiple people at this point, ensuring each healer doesn't spam any one spell more than 30%-ish of their gameplay does not instantly make them all big brain Ninja rotation high APM expert jobs that shit on any new or casual healer. What has been suggested for White Mage by a number of people is still extremely beginner friendly.

The only thing that's lost and what seems to be the only thing you care about is the ability to parse purple or higher without any effort whatsoever. Apparently we're not allowed to have every healer be rewarding because then even when you clear content, you'll be upset because you because you'd have to work harder to be better than everyone else at that clear.

[Shurrikhan]

I made that specific point clear. The point was that casuals and DoTs do not mix well.

Corrections: players with high affective filter (be that from low engagement, high panic, or whatever else) and hitting things in a timely fashion do not always mix well. That's not unique to DoTs.

That also depends greatly on how focus is drawn to them. When DoTs were more integral and frequent such as back in ARR and HW, you'd see even very casual Bards maintaining their 18s duration DoTs with little issue. You'd see even casual Melees maintaining their 2-3 DoTs and their 2-4 buffs, both, with relatively little issue.

Exception: Heavy Thrust after combo length was lengthened by 2 GCDs per cycle saw a whopping <10% of players not always maintaining it. Which penalized them with 17 to ~50 potency. Oh noes?

Admittedly, yeah, if you set things up so every healing spell cultivates a Blood Lily (still ridiculously broken, btw), there'd be more focus on that previously accessible-per-60-seconds Misery. Perhaps it would even reorient attention around that previously accessible-per-60-to-100 seconds skill so much that being penalized for an entire Glare's worth of damage for each GCD past every 4th GCD in which they don't immediately pop it (e.g., if they panic-GCD-heal instead of dumping immediately from losing that rhythm (as opposed to 10.8% of a Glare per GCD for which Dia is delayed) wouldn't somehow be less player-unfriendly. But I doubt it.

Even RIGHT NOW, if we LEFT HEALERS ENTIRELY ALONE, they get more than 10% of their damage from more than one button.

GCD damage. We'd been talking about offensive spells. I wanted more. You did not. Sorry for the earlier ambiguity in the quick post.

AST and SCH can get ~90% of their GCD damage off a single button alone (and, without needing heals, even WHM does the same).

If they do not hit Combust, for instance --i.e., if somehow DoTs were uniquely or disproportionately what casual players struggle with rather than GCD minimization or CD usage in general-- then those Combust casts would become Malefics. The value of Combust, or indeed any other (soft) CD with an opportunity cost (that of a Malefic), is only its bonus (its damage over Malefic).

Each job can put out 24 GCDs per minute, pre-Spell Speed. If, per minute, they put out 24 fillers instead of 22 fillers and 2 DoTs, they average 90% of their damage potential.

Those DoTs do not simply vanish into the aether with no replacement, unless the problem is with more than DoTs (e.g., an issue with spending more than 90% of their time casting at all, even despite those DoTs being instant-casts).

Also, I don't think "didn't keep a DoT up or even apply it" is in the category of "mistake". Letting a DoT fall off isn't a "mistake". Letting a DoT fall off isn't a "mistake". A mistake is when you hot a button that's not optimal, not when you lose track of something because the native UI of the game does

It is a mistake. You hit another filler when you had the opportunity to start tapping into the bonus value of your soft-CD instead. That's hitting a non-optimal button. It's a ton less punishing than accidentally hitting Gekko after Shifu because you got your combos crossed, but it is literally hitting a non-optimal button.

I've pushed for UI adjustments since ARR, such as by allowing the DoT skill's icon itself to show the remaining time on your last enemy targeted, but seriously, it's not difficult to just put the Target's Status Effects just directly above or to the side of your own priority buffs, each expanding in the opposite direction, so you can easily track both. Voila.

The UI is customizable. If looking up per 20-30s is difficult... move it so you don't have to. We've been able to stack them neatly atop each other since the game's re-release.

I've said it doesn't represent the majority.
I've said it's an echo chamber.
I've said it doesn't allow for dissenting voices.

But where did I say it has nothing of value to consider and/or dismissed it outright?

If it weren't representative of the broader playerbase (and instead so skewed in our interests as to be incompatible with any desire for 'the greater good'), then why even bother?

If you keep hearing "echoes" of only the same thing, it might because you continue to ignore the variety in warrants for a shared conclusion, let alone the many differing conclusions themselves. When you simply classify anything disagrees with you as an echo of the same thing regardless of its motive, experiences, or underlying logics, then yeah, things will sound the same. A participants selective hearing, though, isn't the fault of a place of discourse.

If these forums don't allow for dissenting voices, then why are so few voices in agreement... on virtually anything between emotional handwaving ("things are bad/we need change") and hard facts?

But, let's you were actually right that this is a skewed echo chamber with some powerful group determining what is or is not "dissent". That would actually be damning. It'd give you, on the whole, far more reason to leave and never look back.

So which is it?