[Opinion] Why I'm disappointed by most changes to healers.

[Sebazy]

Again, I think you're selling the community short, there's a lot of players out there who simply enjoy getting stuck into 'trap' groups and seeing if they can carry/coach them through the content. Have a little faith and get 'networking' so to speak.

Unique and situational abilities with a truly huge impact simply doesn't work. I was a healing pvp shaman in vanilla WoW, I had a bag load of cheap dirty tricks (anti melee invulnerable mail, green whelp armour, anti stealth tremor totems, anti mage grounding totems, skull of impending doom for WSG or just getting in/out of situations, hundreds of NDB/Tubers at all times, the list goes on) up my sleeve and whilst it was amusing in play, it wasn't remotely fair or balanced for those that had the task of trying to deal with me.

As for your comment about the obsession over DPS or DPS buffs. The problem is, what alternative is there? You mention survivability vs avoidable hits but TBH, where can you even go with that? Mechanical fails fall into 2 camps, either it's very survivable or it's going to hit you with way more damage than you could ever sensibly expect to mitigate (Or just kill you in a way that's unpreventable). The only mechanics I can think of in current content can be failed but genuinely require CDs to power through are Susano's lightning and O2Savage's leap. I can't think of any other situation where I couldn't just brute force through it with normal abilities or that player is flat out dead. The RM Ahk Morn is really rather weak compared to Bahamut/Nidhogg for example.

Look at it this way, I've been a healer main since the days of EQ going back to late 1999, I've been raiding since raids were a thing (You'll see me listed on the Kunark and Velious slow charts for example), feel free to google up my 4 digit magelo profile if you want confirmation of that. Despite FFXIV's DPS bias, I've always been known within my server's raiding scene as a cautious healer rather than someone you'd take along for big healer DPS and my logs rankings reflect this, 9th worldwide all stars HPS on Gordias, 4th worldwide on Creator (I was nowhere on Midas primarily due to my house catching on fire). So ya, I'd like to think I know a thing or two about healing.

IMHO? Spear was RR bait or an instant discard because my attention was better rewarded focusing elsewhere than trying to cook up some outlaying situation where it might actually have a real impact beyond advancing my cooldowns 20 seconds forward. Throwing it on a tank or dps in a situation where it would matter (A rough primal or savage) would a best see it going to waste because they use their cooldowns on a strictly practiced rotation, or at worst, would mess their rotation up resulting in something between a wipe/tankdeath or just the loss of a big chunk of DPS.

And what was the change for? For the sake of nothing but clearing a battle 20 seconds faster.

You keep saying this, and yet you keep failing to understand how important DPS pushes were in large chunks of raid content especially towards the end of HW. A Zurvan PF that didn't push soar had a slim chance of clearing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an A12S group that could kill it before the second set of fountains had a massive advantage over a team that couldn't. In these situations and more, that 20 second faster kill would typically make the difference between a kill or a wipe.

Outside of savage I really don't think it matters because frankly, the content is a trivial face roll at best.

TLDR: I see myself as a support, keeping them alive is one facet of my job, doing my utmost to help them get the clear smoothly and efficiently is the other. Helping them push the best DPS they can even if it involves helping them to ignore mechanics is the best method of this at my disposal currently. Thus that's what I do.