A question for SCH mains and enjoyers

[IDontPetLalas]

Has anyone here who doesn’t like current healing ever said that there should be no compromise and that all the healers need to be changed or are you just conflating totally different issues

For example let’s say we changed 3 healers and left 1 in its mostly current form, the two most likely candidates to be left alone are the regen healers, WHM is the games baby healer for better or for worse and AST while I think it’s clunky can be argued has a somewhat interesting DPS expression system

Now let’s say in thread 1 I say “yeah sure we can leave WHM mostly alone for people who like current healers” then in thread 2 I say “I think despite misery being a patchwork fix lilies just do not fix 14’s healing style” that is not me going back on my first point, that is me presenting my opinion on x job when the discussion focuses on y thing

I’ve never been opposed to jobs being left in their current form, hell current WHM is functionally 4.0 WHM anyway on a difficulty level, is anyone really asking for 4 HW SCH’s

So again I’ll say just because I rag on each healer individually when it comes up in conversation does not mean that I’m opposed to one or two staying roughly the same

Do I need to spell this out every time I have an opinion about a healer

To be fair, there has been far more discussion and arguments m some of which were made in favour of modifying all of the healers and not leaving one "as-is". I'm not going to even try to summarize all of the past threads and posts (of which there have been many), some of which ( I would say a minority) - but argued in favour of leaving one alone.

A caveat- those were lengthy discussions, that's what I recall. Incidentally I would not say that "AST has an interesting DPS expression system", I don't consider spamming malefic that interesting, and the card system is currently not well designed in some aspects.

[Renathras]

Has anyone here who doesn’t like current healing ever said that there should be no compromise and that all the healers need to be changed or are you just conflating totally different issues

Ty has outright said all Healers must be changed, not even one can remain. He also opposed the idea of adding a new healer with the current paradigm while changing the existing four so that a person who likes healing now could "shelter" under the new healer. (That discussion in particular went hairy because of confusion over it being a Class or a Job, since we know classes in FFXIV aren't full Jobs, but he seemed not to like the idea of there being a healer Job that might have an aesthetic he'd like to play that doesn't exist in the changed/more complex state).

Semi has also insisted that they must all be changed (or specifically that WHM can't be "left behind"), and frequently used the argument like Ty that we have to change them all to be complex since someone might like one aesthetic and would be upset if it was "the simple one" and they wanted the complex playstyle (completely disregarding that the people who prefer the simple play style would not have any option at all). Semi is...quite...vehement about this, so if she sees you suggesting it, you'll likely get an earful.

Shurrikhan has made a similar argument to the aesthetic one, too, most recently about Ranged physical, but when I tried to make the connection to Healer and infer that means we shouldn't change all of them, brushed me off. [EDIT to add applicable quote:

I doesn't matter who speaks it. I didn't care for it any more when Misshapen Chair first brought it up, before you co-opted it. I'm not going to care any more for telling 1-2 jobs to f off and be the sacrificial lamb now.

Askellington and Rein_eon_Osborne have both said that not changing one of the healers would be a punishment to whichever was left unchanged, and refused to see that someone like me sees the change as the punishment, not the being left unchanged.

Roe has called it garbage design that shouldn't be allowed to stay. (As she says in her reply to you, she thinks her changes would be "roughly the same", but that's "the same in the sense of still being the easiest" not "the same as in not being changed". Kind of like saying giving WAR two DoTs would still be "the same" since it would still probably be the easiest tank; objectively, that's not the same, her "roughly" is a pretty big approximation.)

Sebezy is a bit more muted, but seems to also hold that they should all be changed, but doesn't engage in these discussions as much. Fulminating and Nizzi are kind of in this camp as well in they also seem to oppose leaving any healers the same. I think IDontPetLalas may be in this same group, I can't remember any specific time she made the above arguments instead, but she's been consistent in disagreeing with me when I bring things like this up, so I THINK she's opposed to it as well?

Two people say something roughly aligned (Ren posts all these threads hoping healer opinion has somehow shifted), and we're told 'see, echo chamber'

You realize that's not why I called this place an echo chamber? I've been calling it that for months, not in reaction to just those two posts. And I'm not even sure I was the one that brought up "echo chamber" in this thread. I think Aravell did...

Regardless, I think it's been pretty consistent here that every time I've brought it up, I've been told we can't do that. Until today, with Deo and now you, I've never seen any other poster here support the idea, and I've been shot down/opposed whenever I propose it.

For example let’s say we changed 3 healers and left 1 in its mostly current form,

WHM and SGE. WHM because it starts at level 1, has a more or less similar playstyle to what it has for the game's entire history absent HW (even in ARR it was played much like today except for very top end 2nd Coils healing, as Sebezy can attest where it was pushed to the limit there and a lot more Cleric and damage was used), and is, as Misshapen Chair (a video I often link on this topic that makes this exact same point: https://youtu.be/sbWubxOTUWU?t=676

The other that would make sense to me would be SGE. While a BIT more complex, the thing it has going for it is it was introduced this way, meaning there's no "lost glory days" effect. That is, many WHMs want Aero 3 and possibly Cleric Stance back; some SGEs want SB DoTs or ARR DoTs back, or the old Eos where you could macro her abilities and such; most ASTs seem to want the old cards and hyper-oGCD stuff to weave and manipulate those like old Sleeve Draw, Royal Road, and Time Dilation. SGE is also the most DPS focused of the Healers right NOW, so there's an argument for SGE being the one to remain as it is. Btw, this is the one in particular Ty hates me mentioning; not to keep mentioning him, but SGE is his favorite of the archetypes, and he points out - rightly, I think - that SGE's lore supports the idea of a more complex healer, both in how controlling nouliths is described as very challenging to master and that unlike the other "give you healing aether" WHM/SCH or "turn back the clock/fate and rewind a bit of time to before you were wounded" AST, SGE is a doctor, their lore describing them being knowledgeable of both magic AND Human anatomy. Meaning they are using a much more technical form of healing, and their nouliths (an advancement from ancient aether-infused rocks that were used as early magic wands) are delivering healing precisely to where the wounds are in the precise way to heal them.

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In any case, I've posted this a number of times, and am kinda shocked seeing two people in one day seemingly on board with what I've been arguing for months.

To be fair, there has been far more discussion and arguments m some of which were made in favour of modifying all of the healers and not leaving one "as-is".

This. Though "some" means "all that weren't started by Ren", as I've thus far been the only person here to seriously propose and champion the "4 Healers Model" idea.

The "some of which" referred to in favor of leaving one alone were all me, I believe. Originally, it was leave 2 alone - one each of Pure and Barrier, with my proposals being WHM and SGE or WHM and SCH (there is something to be said for SCH/SMN being "entry" Jobs on one class for people that are turbo-casuals to have both together as opposed to one being super simple and the other being super complex). I eventually trimmed this down (the word "compromise" comes to mind) to just one. ANY one. I even said once AST could be the one to not change if that was allowed, the one Healer Job currently that I don't like and don't play. That I would change to that one if even just it could be left alone. I was willing to give up the three I play (AST is the one I don't) for one to stay the same, thinking that 25% staying the same and 75% changing was more than fair...and was told to go pound sand. I even made a proposal for SCH for a relatively minor set of changes that would add a bit of rotational complexity while "paying that off" by easing some of the Job's clunk - which doesn't meet the "1 left alone" standard, even.

That last one is the only one that was at all semi-well received (not universal praise, but not universal condemnation) here, though it was not because it was "leave 1 alone" so much as it was "change even this one, and make changes that include another DoT and DPS rotation optimization", so even that doesn't meet the idea.

So until today with you and Deo both, there has been no agreement with "leave 1 alone" in your case and "leave 2 alone" in Deo's.

[ty_taurus]

Ty has outright said all Healers must be changed, not even one can remain. He also opposed the idea of adding a new healer with the current paradigm while changing the existing four so that a person who likes healing now could "shelter" under the new healer. (That discussion in particular went hairy because of confusion over it being a Class or a Job, since we know classes in FFXIV aren't full Jobs, but he seemed not to like the idea of there being a healer Job that might have an aesthetic he'd like to play that doesn't exist in the changed/more complex state).

I like how you went out of your way to explain my stance for me (crudely) but failed to add in that I am entirely in support of reworking a healer to appeal to players who do not want to DPS as healers. You didn't feel like that was an important aspect of my stance to share with the class? I wonder why.

EDIT: Since you hated the idea of repurposing Conjurer because of arbitrary language that actually doesn't affect the game's engine in any functional way, I came up with a better idea just for you. After finishing the level 30 Conjurer questline a new quest unlocks where Syphie hands you her mother's job stone: White Mage (Classic) or WMC. This is an alternative version of White Mage that shares the same level and equipment, but uses a different job stone, similar to Summoner and Scholar. It's based on traditional White Mage spells.

Here's the full level-up list

Here's the final action list at level 100:

Offensive Spells:
Dia (Classic) - Single target damage with a potency of 430. 1.5 second cast. 200 MP. GCD
Holy (Classic) - AoE Damage around target and all enemies nearby the target with a potency of 215. Inflicts Stun for 4 seconds. 1.5 second cast. 400 MP. GCD.

Healing Spells:
Cure (Classic) - Single target healing with a potency of 600. Instant cast. 300 MP. GCD
Cure II (Classic) - AoE heal on target and allies around target with a potency of 400. 1.5 second cast. 600 MP. GCD
Cure III (Classic) - Single target healing with a potency of 1100. Instant cast. 600 MP.
Cure IV (Classic) - AoE heal on target and allies around target with a potency of 600. 1.5 second cast. 800 MP. GCD
Regen (Classic) - Single target healing over time with a potency of 150. Lasts 30 seconds. Instant cast. 600 MP. GCD.
Regen II(Classic) - AoE healing over time on target and allies around target with a potency of 150. Lasts 45 seconds. 1.5 second cast. 1000 MP. GCD
Arise (Classic) - Resurrects target to a weakened state but with full HP. 2400 MP. 8 second cast. GCD.

Mitigation Spells:
Protect - Single target 15% physical mitigation for 20 seconds. Increases the healing magic potency of your next healing spell by 20%. Instant cast. 300 MP. GCD
Protect II - AoE 10% physical mitigation on self and all allies nearby you for 15 seconds. Increases the healing magic potency of your next healing spell by 20%. 600 MP. GCD.
Shell - Single target 15% magical mitigation for 20 seconds. Increases the healing magic potency of your next healing spell by 20%. Instant cast. 300 MP. GCD
Shell II - AoE 10% magical mitigation on self and allies nearby you for 15 seconds. Increases the healing magic potency of your next healing spell by 20%. 600 MP. GCD.

OGCD Abilities:
Pray - AoE heal on self and all nearby allies with a potency of 400. OGCD. 20 second cooldown. 3 Charges.
Renew - Fully restores HP to self and all allies nearby you. OGCD. 120 second cooldown.
Unicorn - Summons a Unicorn at a fixed location that restores HP to all allies within 30 yalms of it every 3 seconds with a potency of 400. Lasts 15 seconds. OGCD. 120 second cooldown.
Charge - Restores 20% of your missing MP. OGGCD. 45 second cooldown.
Silence - Inflicts Silence for 2 seconds. OGCD. 45 second cooldown.
Blind - Inflicts Blind for 15 seconds. OGCD. 45 second cooldown.

There you go, a healer with as much flavor as a plain oatmeal to suit your tastes independent of the current White Mage, but as a separate job, and with the identity and nomenclature you particularly enjoy.

[Renathras]

I like how you went out of your way to explain my stance for me (crudely) but failed to add in that I am entirely in support of reworking a healer to appeal to players who do not want to DPS as healers. You didn't feel like that was an important aspect of my stance to share with the class? I wonder why.

Did I misrepresent your position?

Do you support one healer going forward COMPLETELY unchanged?

I didn't mention there DPS buttons, did I? "said all Healers must be changed, not even one can remain", opposed the idea of adding a new healer with the current paradigm", "not like the idea of there being a healer...that doesn't exist in the changed/more complex state"? As you told me recently, you support changing AST to buffing, non-damage gameplay, but that it must be changed into a more complex state as well, and that no healer should remain in the current state. You cited your work as a game developer (though didn't tell me the game; I'm not the type to doxx or harass anyone, I was just genuinely curious to see a new game I might not have heard of - or might have - I think it's cool you work on game design).

You wonder why? Because I was summarizing a half dozen people's views in an already long post, and you wanting to change AST to be more complex but as a buffer is still you not wanting any healers left as they are. The effort by you is specifically as you say "to appeal to players who do not want to DPS as healers", but NOT to appeal to players that want a healer Job to remain AS IT IS TODAY. You've explicitly told me you don't want any to, and think that would be garbage design. I think I got you to once, in exasperation, say "Fine, do that, we'll watch the healer Job you like fail" (to extremely loosely paraphrase), but you haven't restated that position since nor shown an openness to it.

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Your position is that all Healers must be changed and none can remain exactly as they are today, yes?

You oppose the idea of any new Healers being added that are as the ones today (e.g. if we took WHM, pushed copy then paste, and just changed the spell names and FVX)?

That's what I represented as your stance. It seems I represented it correctly. I'm not sure the problem here. You oppose any healers being left as they are today. Snow was asking if anyone opposed just leaving 1 healer as it is today. You are in that camp of people, hence I mentioned you as such. I'm confused why you think that's a problem?

[ty_taurus]

Did I misrepresent your position?

Do you support one healer going forward COMPLETELY unchanged?

Yes, actually. Particularly the "he seemed not to like the idea of there being a healer Job that might have an aesthetic he'd like to play that doesn't exist in the changed/more complex state)." statement which is not true. I'm not really interested in White Mage, it's just that the current paradigm is a failure and is not worth saving in any regard. There is a way to redesign each healer to ensure that each healer actually has room to engage with the combat system while still having one be very forgiving and easy to pick up for any new or learning healer, still be straightforward in how it approaches healing and damage, all while moving away from mash the filler button until the button disintegrates into a pile of powdered plastic system.

Its your stance of "One healer cannot change in any way, shape, or form at all because I won't like it" that is inflexible. Also I added a personalized second White Mage job in the post above just for you. You could play White Mage (Classic) and have your one-button-fits-all playstyle while everyone else plays regular White Mage: WHM vs WMC.

[Aravell]

And I'm not even sure I was the one that brought up "echo chamber" in this thread. I think Aravell did...

You did, 3 posts above mine.

The difference is, my posts aren't bad faith/ulterior motive, they're just in opposition to the echo chamber here, but are serious propositions and attempts at compromise or raising points to that end. Your post wasn't a serious proposition at all, it was trying to prove a point.

I'm not so petty that I'd call you out on something you never even said.

[Renathras]

Your position is quite literally the definition of "inflexible."

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? My friend, your position meets the definition of "inflexible" far better than my own. Case in point:

Why? You're against "If we rework one healer we should rework all healers." Why are you now suddenly open to equality?

Why? Because you've introduced a new concept - that we can have two versions of healer Jobs. That solves the problem entirely. Just have two versions of each. Up until this point, I've held that isn't an option since FFXIV doesn't have specs or options for this. But if you're introducing it as an option, we can run with it. (I don't think it's realistic, I doubt that the Devs will make two versions of one Job like this, but if it IS, there's no reason to limit it to one Job

"open to equality"? This isn't an equality argument. You've opened up a new avenue of discussion where both sides can have access to all healers. Why WOULDN'T we do this for all four Jobs if we can do it for one?

Additionally: It's also interesting to me you are unwilling to allow an added/new Job to be simple OR to copy an existing Job (WHM) to a new one and let that be "the complex version of it" (Druid), but you ARE willing to make a COPY of a Job - but ONLY one and attack me for suggesting otherwise - so that it's only allowed if you still have access to that same Job in a complex version. But while implementing this new functionality (two versions of the same Job), you don't want to extend the franchise.

It's like I said before - you want (selfishly?) all the healer Jobs to be where you will enjoy playing them and you don't want any to be where you do not. So much so that you aren't willing to leave any simple, nor to add any new Jobs that are simple, nor to add a new Job to be a complex copy of an existing one. You're only willing for one to be simple (now, after over a year of this back and forth) if and only if it's only one Job AND it has a complex copy.

I'm sorry, you meet the definition of inflexible far better than I do.

You noticed that Snow was fine with Sem's take, right?

Irrelevant.

Snow didn't ask the question "Will I/Snow agree with someone's reason for not wanting even 1 healer to stay the same?"

Snow asked the question "Who, if anyone, is opposed to 1 healer staying the same and the other 3 changing?

I answered the question. This is you trying to move the goal posts, a common thing here (someone else just did it in another thread and I noted it there as well). A case of "Here's a debate topic. Oh no, Ren offered a correct rebuttal to it. How about we just bring up a new topic, pretend that was the topic all along, pretend the other topic wasn't under discussion, and say his rebuttal doesn't address this new topic?"

My rebuttal wasn't to whether or not Snow was fine with Sem's take.

My rebuttal/answer was to the question of who is opposed to leaving 1 healer the same. That remains unchanged, since even your latest proposal isn't keeping one Job the same, it's making a copy of one Job (but only one), something never done in the game before, so that you can change all 4.

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And you know what the messed up thing is?

I MIGHT even be willing to accept that. It would be really stupid - no other Job in the game has two versions OF THE SAME JOB; the closest to that concept is BLU - and there's no reason to do it - we have the option of just not changing it OR as I suggested before adding a new Job to be the "complex" WHM (Druid seems the most likely alternative, though it could also be Shaman or Elementalist or even Geomancer as a healer). It's the dumbest possible solution/compromise. But I wouldn't even oppose the idea outright.

Because UNLIKE you, I've shown extraordinary flexibility.

You could, but then the question would (rightly) be asked: if SMN loses it's complex playstyle, and the playstyle is given to Green Mage, why could SE not have introduced Green Mage with a simple playstyle and left SMN alone? Or in healer terms, why did every healer have to be kneecapped in SHB, when instead they could have left them alone, rode it out for 2 years, and then added SGE for people who want 'relatively simple'?

I mean, I've addressed this before. Literally. In the DPS forum. In a thread on this topic.

As I said then (similar to the Druid argument above), I think they should have added current SMN as branching from Arcanist but with a new Job stone of Evoker, calling on FF history (I think it was FF3?) where Evoker was kind of a "junior Summoner", kind of like Sage was a "higher level Red Mage". Evoker was a more simple and lower level version. This would have allowed both to co-exist.

Alternatively, introducing Green Mage as the DoT mage would have been an intelligent alternative considering old SMN to most people didn't play like a SMN. That's been something even people that liked SMN frequently said prior to EW (where it became vogue to rag on new SMN and praise old SMN to the high heavens). Old SMN has been derided as "discount WoW Warlock" for years. People have long pointed out that poisons and DoTs aren't thematically Summoner traits. And before EW went live, when people just saw visuals of the new SMN animations, people were remarking then that it FELT and LOOKED like a proper Summoner.

On the other hand, Green Mage has long been a status effect Caster, so it thematically fits for a DoT mage and makes more sense. Green Mage as the "simple playstyle" doesn't make any sense as a DoT mage, since DoTs are generally not simple/casual friendly (as I've pointed out many times before), and GRM would more be suited as a complex/technical Job with debuff and buff maintenance. So if they were going to do a simple Summoner, Evoker makes sense, Green Mage as a simple Job really does not.

Note that I supported either option, though - a new Job OR if the old one was reworked...another new Job to maintain that playstyle. Both positions I hold related to Healers as well. Both positions rejected here. So take from that what you will.

I think the current healers do have fans. Those fans are people who don't like trying, don't want to improve, and want to make sure that playstyle is also optimal. A while back, Roe spent a lot of time designing a hypothetical WHM that keeps the Glarespam playstyle at 90% of the job's damage output while providing a rotation of sorts that could eke out another 10% if you wanted to go for it. Ren rejected it outright. Nope. No complexity for its own sake.

Semi, I think my biggest problem with you - and why I'm sometimes flippant in responses - isn't that you disagree with me, isn't that you're unpleasant to me. It's that you outright lie.

Maybe you forgot, but I even made a proposal - me, the guy that doesn't want complex things - for a SCH rework that would make it MORE COMPLICATED (not a lot, but more than it is now), allowing that if that was changed that way, it would probably still be pretty acceptable to people like me (not perfect, but "There are levels of existence we are willing to accept." -Architect, The Matrix 2). I even bumped it just recently to see if people still like the overall idea:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-Proposal-SCH

...so stop lying and saying I reject all complexity. While I think complexity isn't always good, is often bad, that over-complexity IS bad unless it's just a single case people can avoid (e.g. BLM), and that simplicity can be good (as long as it's not ALL options so there's NO alternative, as is the case presently with Healers); I'm not against any and all complexity, and there are even some more complexity versions of things I'm willing to accept. That I don't want the same level of complexity as you is not a rejection of all complexity. Hell, I've even said you can change 3 out of 4 of the Healers; and even [b]4 out of 4[/i] if one of them (my SCH example) was kept relatively simple.

You've given nothing.

And you won't.

You outright reject any and all compromises. While Ty has at least bent a slight bit, like a person giving an almost-but-not-quite-imperceptible nod, you have been the very spirit of inflexibility in any form.

And I will say - yet again - "boring and terrible" is, to me, what you're asking for. Jobs staying the same as they are today is them staying "dynamic and enjoyable". But you're incapable of seeing that other people think and see things differently than you do.

You did, 3 posts above mine.
...
I'm not so petty that I'd call you out on something you never even said.

To the first: That's why I said "not even sure" instead of "I didn't". I didn't feel like digging back through the thread to see, but I wasn't sure and so didn't want to make a hard statement. Maybe you can see where I typed "not even sure" instead of an absolute statement?

To the second: Honestly, I don't GENERALLY consider you petty (though some of your comments here have been...); I actually consider you one of the more reasonable and approachable people here. It's one reason I actually engage with you in-depth. Contrast my remarks to Semi, which are more dismissive, because I know she's just unwilling to do anything but hate at this point and I can't change that intransigence and it's so caustic there's no way to really have a productive conversation with her. Though I honestly thought you were referencing me talking about it in General, not here.

Though one thing I'll note: No one has actually given a good rebuttal to the point - that outside of my posts (and just recently, Deo and Snow bring it up, though Snow almost immediately "agreeing" with Semi thus shooting it down again), this forum is of a mind on this topic, hence the echo chamber argument seems to be correct. In all this dancing about the issue to catch me in an argument of bad faith or Ty shifting the goalposts or Semi calling me names is the fact that all of that supports the premise of this being an echo chamber as an accurate appraisal.

I honestly don't think it so absurd to say if I wasn't posting here, there wouldn't be any major disagreement. And other than 1 or 2 posts randomly from the people that pop in for a few days then never return, there wouldn't be any posts representing the casual viewpoint at all. I know no one wants to hear that, but as I said before, show me anyone else representing the opposed side. Snow has been posting a lot here recently, but wasn't before, and seemed to hold my side for all of one post before agreeing with Semi. Deo kind of comes and goes, but her post yesterday presenting my own (a prior version of) position...in a post trying to oppose/call me out, amusingly enough...is also a new thing/one-off, and was only posted in response to me being here. If I left this forum, what would you guys really be disagreeing on, other than of SCH or SGE was the worst SCH? Who would be really presenting an argument for casual players here? Hm...I just don't see it.

...

That's fair. I knew your position was more nuanced with most here. And one thing I've been consistent on is that fights should have more consistent outgoing damage (the damage doesn't have to be as big if it's consistent; consistent means that you can't just use oGCDs for everything, and making damage more even also means Jobs with less mitigation aren't as penalized/relatively weak options for a party slot).

I'd like to ask if you still think my SCH idea has merit, as you said before? I remember your big concern was not having Lustrate, but I pointed out that was why I moved it to Aetherpact. I don't remember if you replied after that or saw that, since it was already in the proposal and addressed that particular concern.

This is also the thread we talked about Energy Drain being so pathetically weak (my calculations were that it would shorten fights by on average less than 15 seconds, and that would be if used for all AF, all Dissipation, and in maximum damage raid buffs, food, pots, and BiS damage optimized gear), with the average probably being a lot less.

[Sebazy]

Sebezy is a bit more muted, but seems to also hold that they should all be changed,

To clarify my stance on this:

My position on WHM is somewhat of a sliding scale depending on how much SE are willing to ramp up group wide and especially tank damage taken. If we are stuck at tanks practically self sustaining themselves and casual content dishing out barely an aoe a minute for the foreseeable then IMO WHM needs a significant rethink.

If SE are willing to increase the frequency of AoEs, add a dash of unpredictability and importantly, make it so bosses are steamrolling tanks like they used to, then WHM doesn't need nearly so much work. It's kit is synergistic and simply makes sense. I'd be happy with something as simple as a Thundercloud style proc on the nuke to pep up the still inevitable downtime as long I wasn't spending the majority of time in end game content with that being the only thing to 'need' to keep an eye on.

SCH needs to die in a fire. Either lean back into it's pet aesthetic using the 2 distinct GCDs as a means to combat the monotony and importance of Broils or ditch the pet altogether and drop the tank. I made this suggestion for a SCH rework some 5 years ago and IMO it still holds up pretty well today: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-revamp-theory.

AST is somewhere in between, it has a ton of interesting abilities, but it also has a huge quantity of bloat and needless fluff. IMO going back to old school cards and allowing Draw to use a GCD when it's on cooldown allows us to streamline the card system and encourage a more consistent stream of cards going out vs the flurry for a few seconds followed by 2 minutes of near nothing that we have now. If % based balance really is that impossible for SE to tune correctly, simply adding flat potency to the next few attacks from a player is an easy way to get around the scaling problems. That one's for free Yoshida