Too many "Must-Haves" in the Role Choices Menu.

[Stelaria]

I think people are missing how role actions are meant to work. I think, in practice, you're meant to switch them out on a per-fight basis. As an example, there are a lot of fights on which there isn't a single debuff which can be removed by Esuna - thus, even if it's necessary for the healer role as a whole, it can safely be removed in those situations in favour of something more situationally useful. Actually remembering to switch actions each fight is another matter, especially if players are so eager to pull quickly that they don't give you the opportunity. It's also quite possible to heal even in endgame content without Largesse.

As another example, Interject is extremely situationally useful - but the removal of damage-dealing stuns and silences gives the developers increased design space to design encounters that need stun or silence rotations. We could even see a situation similar to First Coil, Turn 2 - where a fight can play out differently and a boss can use different abilities depending on player choices (in this case, stunning or silencing an ability might cause it to use a different one instead) - though historically, situations like this have tended to default to only a single viable course of action.

Yet another example is 'True North' - some fights either allow a lot of mobility to ranged DPS, or have a 'complete circle' targetting ring which allows positionals to be landed successfully from any angle. The ability is useless in this situation, and can safely be removed in favour of something else. However, in the most recent Savage raid content, the second part of the raid requires the group to remain tightly stacked at the back (or even front!) of the boss for prolonged periods of time, making it difficult for melee DPS reliant on positionals to reach their full potential without 'True North'.

However, there are problems with this approach - if the game's developers are reading, I'd suggest you take this to heart. There are situations - such as the fourth part of the most recent (Deltascape) normal raid content - in which a role skill is 'forced', where the need for it doesn't add anything meaningful to the fight. The raid's boss will cast an ability that applies a detrimental effect which has to be removed by Esuna, or multiple raid members will die. However, it only does this once at the very beginning of the fight - and afterwards, there's no more need for Esuna. This doesn't meaningfully improve the fight, and functions as little more than a 'tax' on role abilities.

In general, I think the best way for players to approach role abilities is as an interchangeable toolkit - and I believe that both encounter designers and interface designers could benefit from encouraging this mindset. The ability to macro changing role abilities more easily would be very useful (perhaps a command that allows all five role abilities to be set simultaneously, that would fail with a clear message and without side effects if any role ability currently assigned is on cooldown, would help, if not an improvement to the UI that allows multiple role ability 'sets' to be defined and changed in a manner similar to gear sets, to a maximum of five per role.)

[Sylvain]

snip

It still doesn't fix the issue that too many skills are too good compared to the others making the choice tuned down to 1-2 skills.

In the healer arsenal, only Esuna is really switchable between each fight.

There is no fight where you don't want Protect, (although we can argue only 1 healer needs it)
There is no fight where you don't want Swiftcast, (unless you dont mind casting 10sec rez , you have a RDM and simply don't find an instant cast useful)
There is no fight where you don't want Lucid Dream (unless you do V2 normal)

Once these are picked, Largesse and E4E are the two best candidate for the remaining skills.
Although E4E randomness makes it a waste sometime. It's not uncommon for the debuff to proc only after the damage burst, if it even procs...
Rescue has very little use as most fight will require the group to move alltogether. Best fight for the skill is probably Susano right now. This skill could be more interesting if it wasn't from the insane input lag this game suffers. I can't recall the number of time I've pulled someone in to see the aoe animation actually hit everyone, yet, the player died alone. A cooldown reduction would also be welcomed.
Surecast can, potentially be useful on Susano if you get paralyzed. But that's about it. (Again, a popular request to change it to allowing cast while moving would make it a viable option)
Finally, only the trash filler Cleric Stance and Break remains. Cleric Stance bonus to damage is so laughable that unless you're reaching for week first clear, the damage gain from this skill can probably be compensated by 1ilv on your Samurai.
We are talking about 5%, on a 90sec CD for 20sec on heal dps. One healer spending of lot time dpsing, with an average dps of 2000-2200, that's barely more than 1% damage increase assuming your do 20sec of dps everytime. Your samurai just getting used to the fight and doing 0.5% more damage will bring more dps to the party.
I mean, missing 2-3 GCD over the course of a fight has probably more impact than cleric stance on your overall dps.
break is obviously useless in PvE.

So what choice do we have? Largesse and E4E or rescue assuming we don't need Esuna.

So again, the issue here is extremely simple.
We can only pick 5 skills, 2 are mandatory, 1 is required by 1 healer at the very least and 1 is boss situational. Which allow, at best, 2 skill for the protect-healer and 3 for the other one. Out of these 2-3 skills, only 3 options are actually relevant, Largesse, E4E and Rescue. One is random as f$$$ and the other one suffer from lag-input.
So in other words, we have no choice which is why almost everyone has, Lucid Dream, Swiftcast, Protect, Largesse, Esuna//E4E//Rescue//LameStance

So until they change and/or add some skill, nothing will change. If they consider the system a succcess great for them, but most player find it to be lackluster, especially healers.