Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
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I've already answered most of this and rebutted it. And frankly unless you're going to properly read what I've said numerous times, I'm done with you. You've consistently either willfully ignored my points as evidenced by the tanks/healers comparison and clearly do not want to have a proper discussion. All you want to do is argue with me and argue over semantics instead of the real problems.


I'm only going to talk about two things here. So actually READ what I have to say for once because you haven't numerous times of which I can quote.

They've said that same thing ABOUT BOTH. So if that means they won't add more healing requirements...it also must mean they won't add more damage buttons. There's no world where the first of those is something they won't bow on but the second is one they will. Especially since, as well all know, they pay more attention to the JP playerbase, and the JP playerbase is even more on the "more healing" bandwagon than the NA/EU/OC playerbase is. Meaning if they WERE to go back on one of those positions, it would probably be the more healing one, NOT the more damage one.

You can't use this, in any rational world, to favor your argument and oppose the contra. If anything, everything we know and have seen suggests the opposite is more tenable.
You know what my thoughts on this are? And I would love for it to be shoved into the devs' faces:

You can't have both. You can't have a boring, unengaging healing design made very easy to do because you're afraid to scare off new healers from the role while also having an equally bland if not worse dps design. One or the other have to give.

Now, why I advocate dps has been repeated enmass but I'll reiterate it here:
  • It is easier to keep healing easy and make dpsing more complex than it is to do the opposite. Why?

It requires new encounter designs that are completely different to what we've seen previously.

We already had a tier where they "increased damage" and the veterans who refused to come back and would have been able to handle it were absent and the new healers to take their place couldn't. Remember the healer shortage in PF? Remember YoshiP saying and I'm misquoting here: "stop asking for healer changes to bring back those veterans and just play healer instead"?

The community and devs both do not want increased healing, damn what healer mains want. There's already a thread with people not wanting to roll back the increased survivability of tanks. And while I would love to say (and have!) "suck it up" clearly I'm in the minority. I would love to have more increased healing. I would love to feel more recognized for doing my job. I would love for tanks to have their healing nerfed so I actually have a place in this game. I would love for the game as a whole to have more team play and team responsibilities to the game. The community does not seem to want it.
  • It requires a redesign of all four healers.

And I'm just talking about their healing tool kit here, not their dps. We have so much bloated healing in our kit that we don't need its well beyond ridiculous.

Not a single Twelvesdamned ability we got in EW was needed. Not. A. One. Were they welcomed? Sure. I like Expedient. I like Macrocosmos. I'd like Lily Bell if it applied on party hit instead of WHM's. I like Exaltation. SGE doesn't have anything "new" to it considering it debuted in EW but I do like Kardia's concept and I like Pan(Haima).

But did we really need any of it? Hells no. And I've gone in depth as to why with just AST's tool kit alone.

In 90% of the content in this game I can quite literally (and do frequently) heal with my lv70 toolkit and nothing else. MAYBE I'll use Macro over ES just because I like the ability but there is no where in the game where it's needed and I can't make do with other parts of my kit and have a better time with it while doing so.

Skills need to be pruned. Ideas need to be expanded upon. SGE is considered a failure by the healing community because its concept (Kardia) felt barely explored and seemed like the devs didn't even want to TRY to make a new healer because they just want to "make sure newbies have what they need" like a checklist.

And this is probably the core issue that the devs really need to rectify: not only that they don't want to try, but when they do "try" it feels like they don't even care. They don't care about what HEALERS want - a fun job experience like everyone else. They only care about the "new player experience" which I don't even believe at this point, and making sure what seems to be their "favored role" of DPS doesn't have to "suffer" with a new healer trying to learn their kit and dying repeatedly.

And note: I don't blame DPS for this nor new players specifically, but I do 100% blame the devs for sucking the life out of what makes the healing role fun and using them as a scapegoat.

Point is: they don't want to make fun healers. They want to make safe healers who have no way of screwing up.
  • Healer down time is still going to be a thing and said down time should be further expanded upon.

There is going to be times where healers aren't going to be healing because there is no reason to heal. Even in a group setting. And while YOU may not find spamming Glare to not be tiresome in solo content, a good chunk of people are. Even adding buffs and debuffs aren't going to fix that issue. And considering WHMs have been asking for something over SCH and AST (and now SGE) I'm not willing to leave them behind. Further...
  • You're so worried about healers being bullied over not pressing a few extra dps buttons and doing damage while also completely forgetting that, outside of Ex/Savage it doesn't matter.

No one is going to care about missed dps in a casual setting. Do you know how many times on the rare occassion I play GNB I've had my Gnashing Fang-Continuation drift? Plenty. Do people call me out for it? No.

"But that's just your experience someon-" I know that. I've heard it and I've had it done to me. On WHM no less. I even called the person out on it. You can even look through my posts where I detailed a WoD run where I had a PoS dps call out the healers in our alliances and I backed said healers up.

It happens.

But designing an entire role to prevent it from happening... is a stupid idea.

Why? It doesn't work. People are STILL going to be called out for X/Y/Z reason. And worse your giving rise to the problem of new healers not knowing how to be better because you don't give them the design space to be better.

I said it in my one post you've yet to read, but I'll say it here too:

A class/job's kit design should not be built around "accessibility" in terms of fool proofing it. Giving people an easier job to play is one thing. I'm not against that. I don't like SMN as it is right now and it deserves the current backlash it's gotten as well as changes to its new design to make it better. But giving people an easy job to do well with is not a bad idea.

Where it becomes a bad idea is where you give nothing for that class to grow in under the false pretenses of it being "easy". And that is where healers are at right now. They have nothing to grow in. The reason people are so harsh with healers doing dps is BECAUSE healers don't have that high of a bar to cross. You quite literally have NO EXCUSE to not be pressing your dps buttons at all for the entirety of a fight. Are you going to miss some? Yeah. Do you get a pass for doing nothing at all? Unless the fight's literally that short (and I'm talking about bosses here and not trash) NO.

And DPS is lax. I don't think there's many EXs or Raids (normal) or even Dungeons where there's an enrage timer. Which brings me to my final point:
  • Giving more depth to the DPS is easier for the simple fact that if you make healing harder, less people are going to be willing to deal with a new or inexperienced healer when it's going to equal deaths and/or wipes.

You not doing DPS isn't some sacrilegious thing that people make it out to be (other than you standing there doing nothing at all). You not adequetely healing though? You think being bashed for not doing dps is bad? Wanna see what it looks like for not doing your "job"?

Cause I've been there. Plenty of times. I've been playing healer for over a decade and part of the reason why I've not been scared off of the role is because I didn't have a group of people harassing me on healing wrong when I was learning, offering no critique or how to improve.

I have a friend who did though. And they're deathly afraid of healing in this game. Enough so that I can't even help them despite them liking how AST looks. They actively don't want to deal with that harassment anymore. And I don't blame them. Because I've had that turned on me.

Only, that happened well after I've gotten confident in my healing skills. Several years after my career. I've even laid it into a tank who was doing their job wrong and telling them no amount of healing was going to fix their squishy butt. A new healer's not going to do that.

And worse? Unlike DPSing which isn't their primary job, healing technically is. Its gonna hurt worse. But hey if you want to bring that into the game, fine. I'm not going to be affected.

Now, I'm of the mind that said healers can grow from it. But if they can grow from increased healing, they can also grow from increased DPS buttons. Especially if it is quite literally nothing more than a Phlegma like ability - a stand alone dps button on a moderately short recast timer (say 20s).

As for this part:

Tell me, what's wrong with Holy and Assize being your 2 additional single target buttons?
I answered that on two separate occasions. I'll repeat them here:

Holy is an AOE not a single target button. Unless you're going to replace it with something else I see no reason why I would want it in a single target rotation. I don't like having a single target GCD on sub45 MNK and I don't want it here.

Assize is not a dps button. Not because its an oGCD but because it has healing tied to it. I don't consider Earthly Star a dps button and I don't consider Macrocosmos a dps button. WHY would I consider Assize to be one just because you to make a GCD with 2 charges? So it can be different than Phlegma?

You can change it 2 charges and on the GCD. I don't mind either way. But please stop saying what I'm asking for, because its not. YOU think its what I'm asking for, but its not what I'm asking for. And you telling me its what I'm asking for makes YOU the liar. Not me. You are asking for MY opinion. Not what YOU think is MY opinion. Take it and either use it or don't.

You've done so with everything else I've said, why not that?