Quote Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo View Post
So Discipline Priest has either a.) magically been deleted from the game from the last time I checked or b.) somehow isn't a shield healer anymore, according to you. Care to elaborate on this?

As for "homogenization", there's what? 3 healers out of 6 who have some variant of the "slow cheap heal" and "fast expensive heal"? XIV basically has those too; your "heal" and your "heal II", and your "sustain/small damage on tank heal". Except I'd hazard I could find a lot more different about Chain Heal and Prayer of Mending than Helios and Medica, and Holy Shock vs Holy Word: Serenity compared to Essential Dignity and Tetragrammaton. Or Blessing of Protection vs Guardian Spirit, compared to...uh, we don't even have equivalents to those spells in this game, lol.

In truth, had SCH remained as it was in 2.0 with its clearly-defined niche, WHM got their regens nuked or taken away and maybe some more power put into their burst healing, and AST was introduced as a pure HoT healer with buffs we wouldn't be having this discussion. But SCH got a CD-reliant Medica and an almost-Cure III with better range and WHM got Lustrate with a CD and a more conditional Adloquium and AST is just an awful rip-off of both of them so here we are.

To me it's less about which abilities are DIRECTLY the same between healers and more about how healer kits in XIV don't have any niches because boss design is rather bland (tank/raid busters or totally avoidable mechs gg).
Discipline has been changed to the battle priest archetype, now their toolkit is more centered towards the dmg=healing type (I don't remember that passive skill) ppl whined enough that discipline was "stealing" their healing that they changed the playstyle lol, so yeah they failed to actaully implement and balance an absorb type healer, wanna also know why? because it was only 1, there's a reason why AST can shield and regen, it can be either of the existing healer so that content can actually be designed towards the need for mitigation.
That said FFXIV healers do play differently in their planning and their utility, yes they might have the same base toolkit but so what?