The state of healers is affecting everyone

[GrimGale]

What makes healing fun and rewarding? Triage.

World of Warcraft is a MMO where healing is made interesting by two limiting factors: Mana Management and the fact that very few healing spells were AoE.

In vanilla only a few spells could top off your party, and even then they had very long CD's and enormous mana costs. They were situational and very valuable when the raid took massive aoe damage (Which in early wow usually meant something was going very very wrong.)

So how did WoW made healing interesting? You had to be very selective regarding who to heal and what to use to heal.

That meant in turn that tanking, aggro management and mechanics were to be respected. If a healer ran out of Mana it meant the party would not be able to fight anymore. The tank would die, the dps would then follow and finally the healer would go down.

What do we have in FFXIV? Healers almost never run out of mana and we have incredibly powerful AoE healing tools with very low prices CD wise. As a result, triage is barely a thing. Not to mention aggro is not an issue, tanks virtually never lose aggro.

That is why, as opposed to WoW where class design was the interesting part, the bulk of "fun" in FFXIV's design is in the encounters. Resolving mechanics is what makes combat interesting.

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

[Melichoir]

But then, why do we even have so many classes? Why have a WHM, a SCH and an AST? Why have four tanks? The more the game evolves and the encounter design brings in new concepts the more our classes become homogenized to allow any combination of such classes the ability to clear said mechanics efficiently. Jobs become an aesthetic choice,so much so those at the core of parties: healers and tanks.

Dont quite agree with this. While homogenization is expected to happen, its not occurring as harsh as its being presented. There are still differences, and those differences matter a lot. As an example, it becomes a lot easier on healing if you dont run double WHM, AST, or SCH in savage. You could do it, but having a more diversified healer comp is better (and I dont mean just for LB.) Furthermore, Healers are gonna have some overlap. At their core, a healer has got to heal. Youre gonna have skills that cross over with one another a little bit. So every healer is gonna have some kind of AoE heal, direct heal, and possible HoT, but how they focus on said skill or how powerful it is is gonna vary. Even WoW had this. Resto shaman chain heal is a variation of Prayer of Mending from Holy/Disc Priest. They conceptually cover the same task, but operate a little differently in scope. Both jump from target to target applying a heal as they do, but Chain heal jumps immediately to the next damaged targeted where PoM has to be procced before it jumps again. Its heal a lot of people at once, or heal one at a time but jump automatically to the next person. Healing potency is a little varied too. Accomplish the same task, goes about it a little differently. And mind you, at one point or another, one skill or the other was considered OP and the other trash. That flipped on occasion.

Homogenization is, I think, a boogy man when we talk about class balances. Its an effect of boiling down every class and skill to the very core basics and then claim "Oh its all the same." People are trying to make the point that because SE trimmed down SCH damage skills, and adjusted AST, that everything is homogenous and healer sucks now. I dont believe this to be the case from my own experiences thus far with healing, nor from discussing healing with people whove been fairly active in raiding. I think I see this pop up more frequently in Normal content (dungeons, and basic roulettes) where the class distinctions become less important and you can get by on the more baseline skills the classes have in common.

This doesnt mean that the classes are fine or dont need to have some adjustments. But I feel that people are greatly over exaggerating the homogenization concept while propping up the "SCH lost its identity" myth when they pulled out some of its DPS skills (SCH healing is based around pet/player healing; being able to deal damage while your pet heals was a side effect of that, not the crux of the class.)

Healers are broadly fine, with some necessary fine tuning required. AST probably needs the most attention all things considering. And the greatest complaint I keep seeing with AST isnt that its not functional, but that it feels clunky/boring to play. While Im not gonna sit here and be like "Fun doesnt matter" (especially since Ive got feelings of disappointment wiht DRK in this regards), I dont think saying "the class is broken cause its not fun, start from scratch!" is really on point. Argue that the class is unfun to play, but not that it isnt working.

"Hunger isn't a real issue because I eat every day" that's your argument.

I mean the inverse argument is "Im not enjoying this job. All Healers are Broken. Everything sucks." Which is, if I want to be flippant, how most of the responses in this thread boil down to.

The data tends to show healers are leaning towards achieving parity in results, so the issues tends to be more an issue of play than functionality.