Has anyone quit healing?

[ForteNightshade]

As a healer main since mid HW, I struggle to make sense of the complaints in this topic.

One issue people have in most games is that they mistake more things to press as complexity. This is not the case. That's just busywork. Pressing one key repeatedly is no different than pressing 4.

I got really good at cleric stance dancing but didn't complain when it was removed. It was more of a hassle than anything.

People largely just fished for balance on the old card system, so they made every card balance, and people complain.

They adjust things based on how people play the jobs, and people complain.

At this point my belief is that people complain just for the sake of it. If they had nothing to complain about they would just complain about having nothing to complain about.

Pressing additional buttons is largely a psychological thing. People want to feel as though their preferred job has complexity even if it doesn't. Hence the illusion of choice. This isn't inherently a bad thing, and in fact, necessary. Case in point, selecting dialogue options in the MSQ is completely pointless because outside of one or two sentence literally nothing else changes. Your tone of response impacts nothing. And yet, a lot of people both requested and appreciated their inclusion simply because it connected us to the story better.

When I do little more than spam a single button on my keyboard, it feels very monotonous since I know I could more or less create a macro and auto-pilot the whole process. No one is under the delusion Aero II, Aero III or Bane made White Mage and Scholar somehow more complex. What they did, however, is make them more fun as it broke up the monotony of spamming Glare and Broil endlessly. The trick is making that "busywork" feel engaging. Astro's redesign fell flat for a lot of people because it lacks engagement. Not only are the cards incredibly weak, they cause clipping issues galore which used to be the one sore spot people had towards Stormblood Astro before 4.3. Sleeve Draw comes to mind; being a complete mess of an ability that now requires Lightspeed just so you aren't dropping Malefic III casts left and right. Simply put, Astro's new system isn't an illusion. It slaps you in the face.

And therein lies the rub. You need to disguise that busywork so it isn't readily noticeable. Take Dragoon, for example. It has arguably the most rigid rotation of any DPS yet is widely the most popular. Why? Because most of its kit feels impactful, and it hides that rigidness behind jumps, flips and cool animations.

You're also mistaken to assume people only fished for Balance. Unless you were top tier speed killing, Spear was a fine alternative; Arrow had its uses on certain jobs; Bole was good in dungeons or pug settings where you weren't necessarily certain how your tank might perform; likewise for Ewer needing more MP if things go awry. Stripping everything away to essentially turn Astro into a Balance bot goes back to what I said above about disguising complexity. Everyone knew Balance was the best card but having to consider other options or just making do with what RNG dealt you made the job feel unique. Without that illusion, it highlights only how monotonous everything became. Instead of thinking, "should I fish for better cards? will the tank maybe need this bole?" A lot of Astro are thinking, "I could just being playing WHM right now and not having to deal with this crap while offering more to the party."