Personally I'm very excited for Shadowbringers

[Belhi]

I don't think anyone was disappointed with the setting and story. People are generally frustrated with gender locking and the lack of a healer Job. It is understandable. There are people who wanted to play Viera but didn't want to play a female character and their are people who wanted a beastal race but didn't want to have to play a male. As for healers, as of next expansion that will be a 6 year wait since the last job, over half of FF14's lifespan by then.

With the issues they have had with the healers before now unless you have a truly inspiring revamp of the healing system in FF14 it is going to be damn disappointing for those who have grown rather tired with the existing jobs. Hell, I usually run a healer but I probably will look at another role for a fresh feel but then with the Trust system that will be no real lose since I won't need to worry about DPS queues.

Also, telling people that have had a four year wait they need to wait another two years isn't going to usually met particularly well.

[Crouchingmoose]

Got your math wrong there. With Shadowbringers we will have 4 tanks/3 healers/4 melee/3 physical ranged/and 3 magic ranged (4 if you count BLU, but I'm not going to get into counting limited classes because thats not fair). I do expect that by next expansion we will see a new healer, because that much neglect to an entire 1/3 of the Holy Trinity is a problem

[shao32]

4 tanks/4 healers/4 melee/3 physical ranged/4 magic ranged

fixed for you ^^

[Lambdafish]

fixed for you ^^

Thanks, even more reason why dancer is valid as a choice over healer

[Hash_Browns]

(except healer mains, sorry :/)

I feel like I've been personally attacked.

Serious note though, still excited for SB, and the new race was a nice surprise.
I know someone who's going to be all over the Ronso race, and will probably switch from a Roe.

I was disappointed that I wouldn't get another healer, but I'm sure that the new skills I get while getting to level 80 will mix all the healers up a bit for me.

[Zakon]

Got your math wrong there. With Shadowbringers we will have 4 tanks/3 healers/4 melee/3 physical ranged/and 3 magic ranged (4 if you count BLU, but I'm not going to get into counting limited classes because thats not fair). I do expect that by next expansion we will see a new healer, because that much neglect to an entire 1/3 of the Holy Trinity is a problem

Can people stop pretending that physical ranged characters are some special criteria for class diversity?

It's DPS. The end. Doing DPS at ranged with spells isn't really that different from doing it at range with a bow except for having a cast bar. You're still competing for the same 2-4 party slots with every single other DPS class.

If you want to play DPS, you already had 5 options for doing it at range, and 4 options for doing it in melee. Every single one of them has a distinct and engaging playstyle.

If you want to play a healer, you only have 3 options and they all play very similar to each other. The gameplay loop of Red Mage is extremely distinct from Summoner. Bards and Machinists have entirely different mechanics to worry about despite having similar proc-based gameplay. But the same can't be said of White Mage with Scholar and Astrologian, where the biggest differentiating factor between all three is that one of them needs to worry about drawing cards and one needs to worry about micromanging a pet.