do you think this Wall to Wall pulling (in roulettes)is hurting the healer population

[Moonlite]

That's two abilities forming more than half of all spells cast in the dungeon. Imagine if another job was in this state, spamming nothing but one or two buttons all dungeon.

Despite this being the way the game has worked for years, SE continues to dumb down and remove our DPS abilities, making the role more and more boring for us. Their incompetence or unwillingness to see the reality of this role's situation is driving people away, and they've repeatedly shown misunderstanding of how healers play at such a fundamental level it's mind boggling.

I actually wondered if giving healers the party buff job and adding debuffs that are impactful it would make people happier. If only healers had buffs it would remove the argument over X dps is better than Y because of buff. It would allow tweaking dps a bit easier. Also reduce dps tool kit allowing for some new stuff or some of the removed stuff to come back in a new version. It would increase the non dps skills for healers and sort of fit in the back row helper play style. I know we would end up with a thread bad healer not buffing dps properly. But we can have a 100 different X not doing job properly. Debuff skills could be balanced to make them worthless on trash packs, but a good punch on bosses which last a bit longer.

[Shalan]

I actually wondered if giving healers the party buff job and adding debuffs that are impactful it would make people happier.

To be honest, I'd prefer more a more buff/debuff style gameplay over DPS when not healing as well. We used to have them (particularly with AST), and I really miss my old cards, Stella, and Disable. But we've seen over the last two expansions SE repeatedly cutting those abilities away and they show no inclination of giving them back. In fact with the cards, they've outright stated it's not going to change back, so we ASTs will have to put up with being a balance bot for our support fun.

But since the devs continuously refuse to communicate with us over the state of our role or any future plans/ideas we're left to fume and turn a hopeful gaze towards DPS. Because gimped as it is right now, it's something we presently have and do, so it's something we can discuss active improvements upon instead of just empty wishes.

[Nomuno]

Which means that it's a total design fail like the bow-mage, and birthed ranger trolls. It's not unfun as not as satisfying or rewarding to play or manipulate and abuse various things. And, bewilderment as to current design changes overall with several feeling really out of touch

FPS games are both notoriously toxic and elitist environments as they are super easy to play and improve (low skill floor = less difficulty) to higher skill levels and doing lots of amazing feats (high skill ceiling = heights of player ability within a given game). The "casual" being a particular strawman that you just like totally invoked. And, the current AST is simpler, requires a lot more to upkeep with a lot less time to do it, and has very little depth than the previous version, but is way easier to get to it's maximum potential, for example.

Platformers like MMZ are notoriously hard and have a niche fanbases that rarely break into the Mainstream in comparison to the more casual friendly genres like FPS and block/stack puzzlers, and, like, a lot of ppl do play this game while watching netflix which is just totes impossible for me and I don't know how they do it

Again what the heck are you talking about. Where is this toxic argument going? I'm confused, are you just trying to make a point that if this game gets harder that it will get toxic? and you are calling my argument strawman? Give me a break, ANY game can be toxic, and EVERY game has a toxic fanbase (size may vary). That itself is inevitable. You will always have people that get their rocks off on griefing or just whooping a players butt.

Regardless, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

[Nomuno]

If this is what you got out of all of this I'm going to assume you don't actually understand anything about what the problem is.

We don't need backseat advice from someone like that.

You don't have an option. I'm very much expressing my opinion, just like you

[Nomuno]

You know nothing of the issue at hand. The issue at hand is because very little of the content in this game is genuinely threatening outside of savage, and even then you have obscene downtime. You can, and will, spend most of your time pressing one button, and another every thirty seconds. That's not interesting gameplay. People are mad because the gameplay isn't interesting whatsoever.

We want to heal, have very little to heal, and we want interesting DPS kits to compensate for FFXIV's game design.

Well then play a redmage. I don't personally think healers need more dps, they need some utitility.

To the bolded, literally said that its a content design issue like 9 times

But since the devs continuously refuse to communicate with us over the state of our role or any future plans/ideas we're left to fume and turn a hopeful gaze towards DPS. Because gimped as it is right now, it's something we presently have and do, so it's something we can discuss active improvements upon instead of just empty wishes.

Then you clearly missed all the live letters where Yoshi has been saying "we understand combat is too difficult" they literally have said nothing over the past year before SHB came out besides "streamline combat" "easier Combat" It's not news that this game is SUPER CASUAL.

[MPNZ]

Again what the heck are you talking about. Where is this toxic argument going? I'm confused, are you just trying to make a point that if this game gets harder that it will get toxic? and you are calling my argument strawman? Give me a break, ANY game can be toxic, and EVERY game has a toxic fanbase (size may vary). That is and of itself is inevitable. You will always have people that get their rocks off on griefing or just whooping a players butt.

Regardless, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

TLDR, FPS games are very casual friendly, but are considered "hardcore" despite being accessible to all skill levels and time constraints/schedules. It is thus a genre filled with casual players, and was like an example because "casual" is used as a strawman or like a scapegoat to form a mob-mentality behind instead of like recognizing and looking for a solution

[Mesarthim]

You don't have an option. I'm very much expressing my opinion, just like you

And you're right that you can express your opinion, but maybe you could at least pretend to understand the other side of the story instead of projecting onto others what you think they should be doing. There is an inherent problem in this game that revolves around healers that Square Enix is not properly addressing (skimming on this part):

Too powerful and plentiful oGCD healing
Too little damage received barring some savage floors
No real options in downtime besides spamming one button

Utility was just flat out removed from AST. There is nothing else for healers to do besides be brainless healbots. Now here's the thing... THERE IS BASICALLY NO CONTENT THAT REQUIRES CONSTANT HEAL SPAM, at least beyond a few wall pulls (that is mostly handled by oGCD heals, not GCD). Even then I am reasonably keeping up with damage spamming one button compared to the tank and dps.

Square Enix is not designing a game around the kind of healing they want done. You claim we "should just play a dps if we want to dps" but maybe you should realize that the game doesn't make us heal as much as Square thinks we should. No smart healer will purposely overheal just for the sake of "omg why aren't you healing and only healing!".

[Videra]

Well then play a redmage. I don't personally think healers need more dps, they need some utitility.

No, I don't think I will.

[ForteNightshade]

I actually wondered if giving healers the party buff job and adding debuffs that are impactful it would make people happier. If only healers had buffs it would remove the argument over X dps is better than Y because of buff. It would allow tweaking dps a bit easier. Also reduce dps tool kit allowing for some new stuff or some of the removed stuff to come back in a new version. It would increase the non dps skills for healers and sort of fit in the back row helper play style. I know we would end up with a thread bad healer not buffing dps properly. But we can have a 100 different X not doing job properly. Debuff skills could be balanced to make them worthless on trash packs, but a good punch on bosses which last a bit longer.

I have long felt the same myself. You could even keep DPS abilities but make it the last thing you fall back on after healing, buffs and debuffs. Not only does that better justify it being extremely simplistic but essentially turns the healer role into support. They do a little of everything but offer low personal damage themselves as a result. I suspect a lot more healer mains would appreciate this direction than "spam Glare/Broil/Malefic". Unfortunately, it's unlikely SE ever implements something like this because their stance has always been "we don't want to make things too hard for new healers." It's that mindset alone which straggles the healer role.

[KanuKano]

I used to heal consistently back in SB and did it well enough to earn a few praises from time to time. Enjoyed it a bit too. But healing in this expansion was a huge miss. I just can't find any motivation to play healer besides when I wanted to finish the role quests. But now that those are done with, I reluctantly do a leveling roulette as a healer from time to time and just stop after one dungeon.

It's just so boring. It's so boring I wanna cry. I'm not even a healer main.