The state of healers is affecting everyone

[Kye]

I still think it's incredible that the devs have barely talked about healers whatsoever since the expansion dropped (and for awhile before as well). In the recent interview with Yoshi P, it was hilarious that he shot down complaints about AST's cards in a single sentence, and then immediately went into a long paragraph about all the great changes they have in store for NIN.

My favourite job was AST, and after the changes I can barely play it properly. The heals are fine; fast and strong. But the card system is so cruddy from a usability standpoint, especially for console players. FFXIV is a game where a large portion of the population plays using a controller, and although there are varying degrees of difficulty between controller and keyboard/mouse users when playing certain jobs, every job's optimal rotation can be performed on either with the exception of AST. This is due to how FFXIV handles targeting party members.

Using a mouse and keyboard, to target a party member the player needs only click the player in the party list using their mouse (or mouseover if preferred), and WHILE they're doing this they can Redraw and Minor Arcana their cards.

On a controller however, the act of selecting a party member and the act of using an ability like Redraw are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. You cannot Redraw and target a party member at the same time, you must choose to do one or the other, and to choose a party member you must physically press the D-Pad up or down the requisite number of times AND press confirm to hard target said player each time or the targeting will reset and cause you to need to press the D-pad multiple times again. To do all this within a GCD is just insane. Before ShB changes, in full party situations you would AOE your cards to cut down on this need to spam your D-pad... now spamming the D-pad IS the main mechanic, because the card you play doesn't matter due to how Sleeve Draw works and the pathetic %s on the cards. Mechanically and mathematically, it's all about dealing them as fast as possible.

This is not to say that I think it is impossible to optimally play AST on a controller, but I argue that maybe only about 1% of the playerbase can, and they do so with a much higher APM than m/kb users. It is this incredible disparity in difficulty between controller users and m/kb users that leads me to believe that AST's card mechanic was rushed and not play tested, and that it is a fundamental flaw that far exceeds any concerns on any other job at the moment as it is a physical bar on players that use controllers.

Healers are the most rushed and poorly developed jobs in the game and this is why so many have stopped playing them. Just look at WHM's level 80 ability Temperence, it's just Largesse with a dmg down buff and an animation from a Firework item. Look at SCH's Art of War, it's just the Aura Blast animation from PVP. Then look at new MCH, look at all the lovingly crafted brand new abilities and animations that span it's entire kit. Healers didn't really get anything new this expansion, they lost things, had things reskinned as their new abilities, and all play exactly the same now.

I believe the homogenization and poor development of healers is really hurting this game. There most definitely is a shortage of healers on some datacenters, and this is likely why they're trying to find a way to break down the walls between the datacenters; so that there will be a bigger pool of healers for every server. If only they would just give healers the love and attention they deserve for once...